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h3. Good water status and historical contamination as defined in the Water Framework Directive

h5. The origins of the Water Framework Directive

The Water Framework Directive is the European answer to the increasing concern of citizens and other involved parties about their water. The new European Water Policy was developed in an open consultation process involving all interested parties: regional and local authorities, enforcement agencies, water providers, industry, agriculture and, not least, consumers and environmentalists. Previously, there was a widespread view that, while considerable progress had been made in tackling individual issues, the current water policy was fragmented, in terms both of objectives and of means. All parties agreed on the need for a single piece of framework legislation to resolve these problems. In response to this, the Commission presented a Proposal for a Water Framework Directive (WFD) with the following key aims:
* expanding the scope of water protection to all waters, surface waters and groundwater
* achieving "good status" for all waters by a set deadline
* water management based on river basins
* "combined approach" of emission limit values and quality standards
* getting the prices right
* getting the citizen involved more closely
* streamlining legislation

h5. The water system as a basis for water management

Formerly water was managed in areas with administrative or political boundaries. The WFD uses a single system of water management: the river basin, the natural geographical and hydrological unit. According to the WFD, for each river basin district - some of which traverse national boundaries - a "river basin management plan" must be established and updated every six years, and this will provide the context for the coordination requirements.

h5. A good status for all waters

There are a number of objectives which focus on water quality protection. The key ones at European level are general protection of the aquatic ecology, specific protection of unique and valuable habitats, protection of drinking water resources, and protection of bathing water. All these objectives must be integrated for each river basin. It is clear that the last three -- special habitats, drinking water areas and bathing water -- apply only to specific bodies of water (those supporting special wetlands; those identified for drinking water abstraction; those generally used as bathing areas). In contrast, ecological protection should apply to all waters: the central requirement of the Treaty is that the environment be protected to a high level in its entirety.
Surface waters should be in compliance with "good ecological status" and "good chemical status". Good ecological status is defined in Annex V of the Water Framework Proposal, in terms of the quality of the biological community, the hydrological characteristics and the chemical characteristics. As no absolute standards for biological quality can be set which apply across the Community, because of ecological variability, the controls are specified as allowing only a slight departure from the biological community which would be expected in conditions of minimal anthropogenic impact. Good chemical status is defined in terms of compliance with all the quality standards established for chemical substances at European level.
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The case of groundwater is somewhat different. Here the precautionary principle leads. There is a prohibition on direct discharges to groundwater, and (to cover indirect discharges) a requirement to monitor groundwater bodies so as to detect changes in chemical composition, and to reverse any anthropogenically induced upward pollution trend. Taken together, these should ensure the protection of groundwater from all contamination, according to the principle of minimum anthropogenic impact. Quantity is also a major issue for groundwater. Briefly, the issue can be put as follows. There is only a certain amount of recharge into a groundwater each year, and of this recharge, some is needed to support connected ecosystems (whether they be surface water bodies, or terrestrial systems such as wetlands). For good management, only that portion of the overall recharge not needed by the ecology can be abstracted -- this is the sustainable resource, and the Directive limits abstraction to that quantity.
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One of the innovations of the Directive is that it provides a framework for integrated management of groundwater and surface water for the first time at European level.

h5. Implementation of the Water Framework Directive

The engine of the WFD is the river basin management plan. This integrated approach combines two different approaches to environmental policy from the 1970s: pollution control on the source side and environmental protection on the effects-side. On the source side, the WFD requires that as part of the basic measures to be taken in the river basin, all existing technology-driven, source-based controls must be implemented as a first step. But over and above this, it also sets out a framework for developing further such controls. On the effects side, it coordinates all the environmental objectives in existing legislation, and provides a new overall objective of good status for all waters, and where the measures taken on the source side are not sufficient to achieve these objectives, additional ones are required.
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With the implementation of the WFD three issues are important: public participation, streamlining legislation and getting the prices of drinking & industrial water right.
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The WFD sets out a clear deadlines for each of the requirements which adds up to an ambitious overall timetable. The key milestones are listed below.
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|| Year || Milestone ||
| 2004 | Characterisation of river basin: pressures, impacts and economic analysis\\ |
| 2005 | River Basin Status Reports\\ |
| 2006 | Establishment of monitoring network; start public consultation (at the latest)\\ |
| 2008 | Present draft river basin management plan\\ |
| 2009 | Establish Programme of measures\\ |
| 2015 | Meet environmental objectives\\ |
| 2021 | First management cycle ends\\ |
| 2027 | Second management cycle ends, final deadline for meeting objectives\\ |
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*The Groundwater Directive*

The Groundwater Directive introduces quality objectives, obliging Member States to monitor and assess groundwater quality on the basis of common criteria and to identify and reverse trends in groundwater pollution. The European Commission submitted this daughter Directive of the WFD to the European parliament on September 19th, 2003 (COM(2003)550). One additional aim of the proposed Directive is to ensure that groundwater quality is monitored and evaluated across Europe in a harmonised way.

h5. The WFD and the IMS

The Welcome-IMS was induced by the general approach to groundwater management as presented in the WFD. The core viewpoint is that water bodies should be regarded as natural dynamic systems and that human intervention in this system should be limited because of precautionary reasons. Both WFD and Welcome IMS take into account that when interventions are planned there is a need for data and knowledge on the level of the whole system.
The WFD is a European legislative framework with the goal to protect the good status of waterbodies and to coordinate the water management on a transnational level, while the IMS works on the other side of the chain, offering a framework to solve problems with polluted soil and groundwater on industrial megasites. The two of them will meet on the level of the river basin management plan where the IMS could be part of a larger management plan. Since the draft river basin management plans are scheduled in 2008, no full implementation experience can be provided yet on how the practical IMS use will fit exactly into the more generic framework of the Directive. The cases of Rotterdam, Bitterfeld and Tarnowskie Gory show that integration on this level can be done succesfully by using the IMS.