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Following the EU consultation for a ‘Fitness Check’ of the Water Framework Directive (WFD), the IAWR presented a position paper and forwarded it to the European Commission.

In summary: The core of the statement is the continuation of the Water Framework Directive beyond 2027, giving priority to the use of water resources for the abstraction of drinking water. The aim of the IAWR is to achieve a water quality that makes it possible to produce drinking water using natural purification processes. To achieve this, the protection of drinking water resources must be significantly improved and given the highest priority. To this end, various measures are identified to strengthen the prevention, minimisation/avoidance of pollution at the source. It also advocates a greater focus on substances relevant to the drinking water supply.

The position paper can be downloaded here.

Source: https://nl.iawr.org/nieuws/

The International Commission for the Protection of the Rhine (ICPR) has published recommendations on how states in the Rhine catchment can further reduce micropollutant inputs into waters. They particularly concern the areas of wastewater collection and wastewater treatment systems, agriculture, industry and trade.

The ICPR has been keeping an eye on the relevance of different micropollutants and existing approaches to reducing their polluting waters for more than 10 years. The exposure situation has been published (ICPR Technical Report No. 246) and different possibilities of reducing pollution exist.

Within the ICPR, the existing approaches have been evaluated at a national level. The result: Joint recommendations to reduce micropollutants in the waters of the Rhine catchment. They focus on municipal systems collecting and treating wastewater containing pharmaceutical residues, radiocontrast agents and other groups of substances, on agriculture, in particular pesticides and on industry and trade, as far as different industrial chemicals are concerned.

The ICPR recommendations have been published on www.iksr.org as ICPR Technical Report No. 253.