Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
rivers. However, during major storm events many of the sewer
systems cannot cope with the amount of water entering them and so
pollution of river waters occurs as the sewage systems overflow.
Even with sophisticated treatment this may not remove a large range
of compounds that have entered the water system through human
use such as medicines, antibacterial products, disinfectants, antibiot-
ics, fire retardants and some chemicals in soaps, shampoos and other
personal care products. Some of these chemicals may be toxic to
aquatic organisms. Other chemicals others such as hormones from
certain drugs may influence other aquatic processes including redu-
cing the proportion of male fish compared to female fish.
In an attempt to tackle water quality problems in holistic way
the European Union devised a legal process called the EU Water
Framework Directive. This is described in Box 4.4.
Box 4.4 The EU Water Framework Directive
The Water Framework Directive is a legally binding process for assessing
and improving the quality of surface waters in rivers and lakes, ground-
water and coastal waters. These water bodies have to be seen to be
achieving good status and, if they are not, efforts have to be demon-
strated to improve the status of the water bodies through whole river
basin management plans. European Union countries that fail this process
may be fined. The key innovation is that whole land management solu-
tions are expected to deal with diffuse and point source pollution and
the provision of sustainable amounts of water within rivers and ground-
water. Assessments have to include not just measures of water quality
but additional measures such as the status of river beds, the ecology and
the flow regime of the river, the sustainability of the groundwater
resource and so on, in comparison to ideal good examples of what the
system should look like under natural conditions. In reality this is all very
challenging to achieve, not least because every water body is unique due
to local soils, vegetation, slope, geology and climate. Therefore, finding
reliable pristine examples which other water bodies must emulate is not
straightforward. However, the general principle of having an integrated
approach to water management is an important one whereby land
owners, regulatory agencies and government bodies can work together
to come up with solutions across the landscape, rather than with dealing
with just the symptoms of the problems within the water body itself.
