Annex I
Future Obligations of the Water Framework
Directive
WFD requires all inland surface and coastal
waters and groundwaters to reach "good status" by 2015.
Specific quality criteria have yet to be set but the Directive
will set demanding environmental objectives, including ecological
targets, to be met by 2015.
Article 9 of the Directive aims to ensure that
pricing policies improve the sustainability of water resources
and requires water pricing policies to perform the following functions
by December 2010:
— Take account of the principle of
the recovery of costs of water services, including environmental
and resource costs.
— Embody the "polluter pays"
principle.
— Provide adequate incentives to use
water resources efficiently.
— Ensure that water use groups (separated
into at least industry, households and agriculture) make an adequate
contribution to the recovery of the costs of water services.
Article 11 requires a series of measures to
be in place to meet the environmental objectives in article 4
of the Directive. Generally we already have many of the statutory
measures in place that are necessary to deliver what the Directive
requires. This includes the current discharge consent system.
The more demanding and wide-ranging water quality objectives in
the Directive mean, however, that many existing consents will
need to be reviewed. Some minor changes will be needed to the
current arrangements for licensing abstraction of water, in addition
to proposed measures contained in the Water Bill.
As part of implementation, the Government also
proposes to introduce a new power to control sources of diffuse
pollution, to the extent that controls are needed to meet the
river basin water quality objectives of the Directive.
For point sources, water and sewerage undertakers
would be directly responsible for meeting the costs of improvements
to their point source discharges and would be likely to contribute
a large share of the measures to improve river habitats and to
alleviate low flows. The costs of improving other point source
discharges would be the responsibility of the industries concerned;
but they might meet some of this cost by paying increased trade
effluent charges to undertakers.
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