J Soils Sediments (2008) 8(4):13 DOI: 10.1007/
The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com SCIENCE AND POLICY COMMENTARY
Differences in policy response to similar scientific findingsexamples from sediment contamination issues in River Basin Management Plans New experiences with sediment issues (monitoring and measures) under the European Water Framework Directive Ulrich Förstner
Received: 20 June 2008 / Accepted: 21 June 2008 © Springer-Verlag 2008
Preface Just recently, on June 4, 2008, the Parliament, Council and Commission, have met a second agreement to specify the former Council proposal of 21 June 2007 for amending WFD (Water Framework Directive), which suggested that Member States may opt to apply environmental quality standards (EQS) for sediment and/or biota instead of those for water (Förstner 2007). The agreed compromise text of Amendment D, Recital 13 (new text passage in bold) reads “Furthermore, Member States should be able to establish EQS for sediment and/or biota at national level and apply those EQS instead of the EQS for water set out in this Directive. Such EQS should be established through a transparent procedure involving notifications to the Commission and other Member States so as to ensure a level of protection equivalent to the EQS for water set up at Community level. The Commission should summarise these notifications in its reports on the implementation of Directive 2000/60/EC. Moreover, sediment and biota remain important matrices for the monitoring of certain substances with significant accumulation potential. In order to assess long term impacts of anthropogenic activity and trends, Member States should take measures, subject to Article 4 of Directive 2000/60/EC, with the aim of ensuring that existing levels of contamination in biota and sediments will not significantly increase”. This commentary has two objectives, 1) the status of the WFD-sediment relationship, and 2) the treatment of sediment issues by river basin communities that form the central institutions to promote the development of RBMPs (river basin management plans), including the program of measures, in their respective river basins. Examples of publications on river basis management in this journal are: Owens (2005), Owens and Petticrew (2006), Panagopoulos et al. (2007), Quevauviller (2006a, b, 2007), Salomons (2008), Schwartz et al. (2006).
1 From monitoring to measuressediment quality assessment under the European Water Framework Directive In theory, sediment issues have developed reasonably under the European Water Framework Directive following an intial underestimation by the water authorities and regulatory bodies of the practical problems with this medium (Förstner 2002). At first, the Advisory Forum on Priority Substances and Pollution Control (CIS/WFD), had included the specific source/pathway “historical pollution from sediments” in the program of measures to be established by 2009 (Expert Advisory Forum (2004). Following the advise from the EAF, the Expert Group on Analysis and Monitoring of Priority Substances (AMPS 2004) proposed not to establish quality standards for biota and sediment at this stage, but to designate monitoring requirements to assess the compliance with the no deterioration objective of the WFD and to assess long term impacts of anthropogenic pressures. The controversial EQS-discussion on sediments was somewhat disarmed by SedNet,
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J Soils Sediments (2008) 8(4):13 DOI: 10.1007/
the European Sediment Research Network, at the SedNet Round Table in Venice, November 2006; definitions in both subject areasmonitoring and measureswere adopted (Netzband et al (2007): “Environmental Quality Standards should only be regarded as high-level screening values as a start of diagnostics, using different lines of evidence, and linking sediment state to impacts” and “for certain measures target values and a good understanding of the system are necessary”. These conclusions are in line with the concensus of other international expert bodies, as summarized in (Wenning et al. (2005).
2 Assessment of risks from particle-bound substances in the Rhine and Elbe River catchment areas two different responses from the River Basin Management authorities A first practical example was the three-step approach by Heise et al. (2004) for assessing risks on Rotterdam harbour from historically contaminated sediment in the Rhine river basin. Identification of areas of risk in relation to harbour sediments used the combined knowledge on ‘substances of concern’ (step 1) and ‘areas of concern’ (step 2), the latter defined by target levels such as the chemical-toxicity-values to decide on either sea disposal or (more expensive) deposition on land. Step 3 requires the estimation of resuspension potential during flood events, transport probabilities, and determination of transport quantities. The Rhine study provided initial evidence that sediment-associated hexachlorobenzene (HCB) from the Higher and Upper Rhine has a significant effect on the quality of dredged material from Rotterdam harbour and that this HCB source can contribute to a failure of the objectives of the WFD in the Rhine Basin. Originally commissioned by Port of Rotterdam, the study now forms the basis of an expert group of the International Commission for the Protection of the Rhine elaborating a comprehensive strategy for sediment management in the Rhine basin (Keller 2008). A similar approach was chosen for a risk assessment on particle-bound substances in the Elbe river basin, which was commissioned by the Hamburg Port Authority and the River Basin Community (FGG) of the Elbe; in expectation of the forthcoming River Basin Management Plan, a chapter on large-scale remediation measures was included (Heise et al. 2008). In fact, considerable efforts have been undertaken in the Elbe basin to remediate the legacies of mining activities of the former German Democratic Republic. During the last 15 years, more than 13 6 billion € have been spent on the former uranium mining areas (300 million m³ waste heaps, 160 million m³ radioactive sludges) and 10 billion € on the restoration of more than 200 open pit coal mines in the middle Elbe basin (Heise et al. 2008). On the other hand, the Chemical Triangle around Bitterfeld still hosts a very severe inheritance from GDR industrial activities: Soils and sediments of the 60 km² Mulde River and Spittelwasser floodplain exhibit extreme concentrations of dioxins and this source can be traced downstream to Hamburg harbour based upon characteristic dioxin congeners. In consequence, the dioxin levels in feed and food from riparian floodplain areas are often significantly above the permissible maximum concentrations (Netzband et al. 2007). A detailed feasibility study from 1993 on behalf of the Bitterfeld District Office, Saxony-Anhalt (Anonymous 1993), is still being ignored by regional decision-makers. Thus, the next flood will again mobilize dioxin from the Spittelwasser ponds; a rough estimate shows that just one of these ponds containing 5.000 m³ with an average of 20.000 ng TEQ dioxin per kg sediment could pollute 10 million m³ of Elbe sediment to 10 ng TEQ dioxin/kg. The situation is aggravated by the fact that until now, no specific target value for dioxin exists to regulate the ‘relocation’ of dredged material from Hamburg harbor into the North Sea. During the past eight months, the FGG Elbe working groups and the Laender authorities racked their brains over the preliminary report. After that, the Coordination Board decided to turn from the results of the study, stating that “the wealth of material has not been transposed into clear, realizable statements”, and additional requests were that both the FGG involvement and its logo should be extracted from the foreword and final reports cover (Heise et al. 2008). With this vote it seems that FGG Elbe has chosen the second alternative of Sabine Apitz’ (2008) proposal at a recent SedNet Conference “Marching forward or flying blind? Ensuring that sediment management strategies and frameworks meet our objectives”.
References AMPS (2004) Expert Group on Analysis and Monitoring of Priority Substances. WFD AMPS Sediment Monitoring Discussion Document, Draft Version, 16 April 2004 Anonymous (1993) Feasibility study on sediment remediation of the Spittelwasser in the Bitterfeld District (in German). UBS Schwerin, IGBVT Hamburg on behalf of the Bitterfeld District Office, July 1993
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J Soils Sediments (2008) 8(4):13 DOI: 10.1007/
Apitz S (2008) Marching forward or flying blind? Ensuring that sediment management strategies and frameworks meet our objectives. Abstract 5th Intern SedNet Conf 2008 Oslo, Norway, p 81 Expert Advisory Forum (2004) Concept paper on emission control from 7th EAF-Meeting at Brussels, 14–15 June Förstner U (2002) Sediments and the European Framework Directive. J Soils Sediments 2(2)54 Förstner U (2007) Environmental quality standards (EQS) applicable to sediment and/or biota. J Soils Sediments 7(4)270 Heise S, Förstner U, Westrich B, Jancke T, Karnahl J, Salomons W, Schönberger H (2004) Inventory of historical contaminated sediment in Rhine basin and its tributaries. Report on behalf of the Port of Rotterdam, 223 pp Heise S, Krüger F, Baborowski M, Stachel B, Götz R, Förstner U (2008) Assessment of risks from particle bound substances in the Elbe river basin (in German). Commissioned by Hamburg Port Authority and River Basin Community (FGG) Elbe. Hamburg, Mai 2008, 349 pp, www.tideelbe.de Keller M (2008) Recent developments in the ICPR sediment management activities in the Rhine basin. Abstract 5th Intern SedNet Conf 2008 Oslo, Norway, p 90 Netzband A et al. (2007) Sediment managementan essential element of river basin management plans. J Soils Sediments 7(2)117–132 Owens P (2005) Conceptual models and budgets for sediment management at the river basin scale. J Soils Sediments 5(4)201–212 Owens PN, Petticrew EL (2006) Sediment dynamics and pollutant mobility in river basinsSEDYMO. SEDYMO 2006 Symposium, Hamburg University of Technology, Germany, 26–29 March 2006. J Soils Sediments 6(2)122–124 Panagopoulos I, Mimikou M, Kapetanaki M (2007) Estimation of nitrogen and phosphorus losses to surface water and groundwater through the implementation of the SWAT model for Norwegian soils. J Soils Sediments 7(4)223–231 Quevauviller P (2006a) Chemical Monitoring Activity under the Common Implementation Strategy of the WFD. J Soils Sediments 6(1)23 Quevauviller P (2006b) Science-pPolicy iInterfacing in the cContext of the WFD Iimplementation. J Soils Sediments 6(4)259–261 Quevauviller P (2007) Water Framework Directive. J Soils Sediments 7(2)111–116 Salomons W (2008) Linking soils, sediments and catchment ecosystems. J Soils Sediments 8(2)67–68 Schwartz R, Gerth J, Neumann-Hensel H, Bley S, Förstner U (2006) Assessment of highly polluted fluvisol in the Spittelwasser floodplain based on national guideline values and MNA-Criteria. J Soils Sediments 6(3)145–155 Wenning RJ, Batley GE, Ingersoll CG, Moore DW (eds) (2005) Use of sediment quality guidelines and related tools for the assessment of contaminated sediments (SQG). SETAC Press U. Förstner Hamburg University of Technology, Institute of Environmental Technology and Energy Economics, Eissendorfer Str. 40, 21071 Hamburg, Germany email:
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