Source Control of Priority Substances in Europe
Country: EU 25 and Candidate and Accession countries
Client/funding: European Commission, EU 6FP project No. 037038
Duration: 2006 - 2009
Partners: 11 European institutions, IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute Ltd - coordinator
With the new regulations included in the Water Framework Directive (WFD) (2000/60/EC), new strategies are needed for control of Priority Substances (PS). For decision making and implementation of the WFD, the industrial sector, local water authorities and EU policy makers need guidelines for the selection and introduction of feasible and cost-effective measures. The overall objective of this project was to support the implementation process for the WFD by providing guidelines and decision support tools for the management of priority substances.
To fulfil this overall objective the following activities were proposed:
- To conduct a material flow analysis for selected priority substances.
- To evaluate available and emerging measures and management options for PSs.
- To develop a decision support tool for identification and selection of relevant measures on European, national and regional level.
- To evaluate different potential measures by applying the decision support tools in case studies.
- To facilitate the development of collective action plans (i.e. river basin management plans) involving all stakeholders (industries, authorities, citizens, NGOs).
- To disseminate results to stake-holders and to strongly interact with industrial organisations, research networks, authorities and NGOs.
The project focused on a set of priority substances representing different uses and emission sources. These include industrial chemicals, pesticides and unintentionally released compounds. Most of the selected PSs belong to the group Priority Hazardous Substances. Environmental Institute prepared a Danube case study as a support to all workpackages.