Crystal Clear or Just as Murky: New Guidance for WFD Assessments

06/01/2017     This blog also contains web-link references.

ABPmer Blog: Steve Hull     The Water Framework Directive (WFD) (2000/60/EC) is an important piece of environmental legislation, aiming to protect, restore and enhance Europe’s aquatic ecosystems. The overall objective of the WFD is to achieve good status in all inland, transitional, coastal (out to one nautical mile) and ground waters based on a number of ecological and chemical parameters. These parameters range from benthic invertebrate assemblages to dissolved oxygen levels to concentrations of hazardous pollutants. Activities and developments in the marine environment which could impact WFD parameters should be assessed as part of the licensing process. The assessment should determine whether the activity or development complies with the objectives of the WFD as any deterioration in status, or the prevention of future improvement in status, is not permitted.

In 2010, and then revised in 2012, the Environment Agency published “Clearing the Waters” guidance documents describing how to undertake a WFD compliance assessment for dredging activities in the marine environment. In the absence of formal guidance, “Clearing the Waters” has also influenced WFD assessments for many other developments in estuarine and coastal waters, such as subsea cable installations, cooling water outfalls and piling for construction works. The guidance uses a series of simple triggers to scope the potential impacts on WFD parameters; however, these thresholds are not intuitive for dredging activities, let alone attempting to shoehorn their application to other types of development. An update was required to encompass the multitude of activities occurring in the marine environment, to incorporate changes to the building blocks of the WFD since the first cycle of River Basin Management Plans (RBMPs) were published in 2009 and to acknowledge the growing importance of the WFD in marine licensing.

In December 2016, the Environment Agency released new guidance on how to assess the impact of any activity in transitional and coastal waters, aptly referred to as “Clearing the Waters for All”. The process is now streamlined into three stages (screening, scoping and impact assessment) and new supporting tools are available online. These include a scoping template to record project specific information, an increased provision of WFD specific data on Defra’s Magic interactive map to help visualise spatial impact on nearby WFD parameters (in addition to the Environment Agency’s Catchment Data Explorer and a number of databases outlining water body objectives, mitigation measures and habitat abundance. The new guidance recognises the key receptors to be considered in terms of WFD compliance, namely hydromorphology, biology (habitats and fish), water quality and protected areas. However, despite these apparent advances to the guidance, there are perhaps a few minor shortfalls to iron out going forward. Click here to read more.

The EA’s guidance link:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/water-framework-directive-assessment-estuarine-and-coastal-waters