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Inventory on Releases from diffuse sources to WATER

Monitoring of releases into waters in EU Member States in the past has been based on a number of European legal documents as well as international agreements setting targets for water quality and monitoring obligations.

In particular these have been the Surface Water Directive (75/440/EEC), Groundwater Directive (80/768/EEC), Freshwater Fish (78/659/EEC) and Shellfish Waters (79/923/EEC) Direcitves, the Exchange of Information Decision 77/795/EEC, the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive (91/271/EEC) , the Nitrate Directive (91/676/EEC), the Bathing Water (76/160/EEC) and the Drinking Water (98/83/EC) Directives as well as international river and marine conventions.

Since 2000 the Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC) is the central legal instrument for the protection of all water bodies.

The Directive requires Member States to identify river basins and assign river basin districts (article 3) and to perform besides other a review on impacts of human activity on the status of surface and groundwater at river basin level (article 5). This includes the need of a classification into diffuse and point sources.
Reporting under article 5 had to be completed for the first time by March 2005 and shall include an analysis on major sources for pollution. The Directive has set a six year cycle for future review and reporting processes.

Reporting on water pollution is characterised by two major parameters, which make a difference to reporting on releases to air.

1. Releases of pollutants are related to river catchments rather than to national boundaries, so that it might be more reasonably to report on a river basin level than on national level. Consequently the river basin concept (map) has been established in the legislation (Water Framework Directive) and the related conventions. Overall about 120 river basins have been designated by river basin management authorities within Europe. This however introduces difficulties as most economic and statistic figures are related to the administrative organisation (the Eurostat concept of Nuts levels 1 to 5) at local regional or national scale. Although a river catchment can always be disaggregated in national parts, it introduces an additional disaggregation level that is never completely compatible with the administrative and the relationship that has to be established is never simple.
   
2. Linkage of measured concentrations of pollutants in water to related release sources is difficult due to complex processes (transformation of some pollutants, retention, transfers and losses) that occur in the soil compartment and aquatic sediments and the complexity of the possible pathways from the emission by a source to the final natural water recipient (not all pathways known, share between pathways).
   
   Already for point sources the controlled pathway (sewer network and treatment facilities) is not always clearly related to the first pollution emitter and problems may occur with inclusion-exclusion criteria as well as measurement methods.
   For diffuse sources the pathways from the emitter to the water are even far less known.
   
   Thus the concept of "Source apportionment" with sophisticated modelling work for estimation of releases has been developed.

Thus comparable source related data as needed for the European PRTR reporting on diffuse sources are currently restricted to a small number of sectors and pollutants and to a limited number of projects.

Current state of work and modelling with respect to source apportionment

Current work in the field of standardisation and harmonisation of reporting in the field of water pollution including guidance for source apportionment and common nomenclature is closely related to the implementation of the WFD and its information requirements.
For implementation of the Directive EU Member States, Norway and the European Commission have developed a common implementation strategy (CIS) which aims at developing a coherent and common understanding and guidance on key elements including a shared water information system for Europe (WISE).
In this context a number of working groups and joint activities have been launched to develop and test guidance. Research and modelling work is mainly supported and facilitated by EEA, JRC and OSPAR.
The development of guidance for the identification of sources of water pollution (point and diffuse) has been dedicated at European scale to an informal working group of governmental and non-governmental organisations named IMPRESS . Work is performed on the basis of the EEA concept of driver, pressure, state, impact and response (DPSIR) and includes an analysis and compilation of available tools modelling pathways or "pollution pressures" as listed below.
For evaluation of pollutant releases into seas and transitional water the HARP/Haz and HARP/Nut guidelines developed by the OSPAR Convention represent the major initiatives for harmonisation of procedures for collection, handling and reporting of data on water pollution.
Concerning HARP/Nut addressing quantification of nutrients losses (N,P) from agriculture to surface water all guidelines have been adopted on a trial basis except of the one for diffuse sources. Models and quantification tools applied in European catchments for source apportionment of nutrient export from river basins are currently under evaluation in the EC funded EUROHARP project.
Other work in the field of reporting on water pollution from agriculture including use of the geographical information system (GIS) is performed in the project #LARA (linkage between agriculture and water quality)
With respect of quantification for hazardous substances in the HARP-HAZ project the prototype state has been reached.
In general future work will have to have a continuous focus on diffuse sources and on priority substances as listed in the WFD, the E-PRTR and international Conventions.

Selection of source sectors

For selection of diffuse source sectors publicly accessible data bases and publications have been screened. The number of identified sectors is very limited as most compilations are restricted to agriculture and a shared nomenclature for sources or pathways such as the NFR for reporting on release to air is not yet established. Some other sectors (e.g. small industrial facilities diffuse urban, consumers, transport) are identified in single Member States, but due to limited data and comparability they do not allow presentation at the European scale.

As a European compilation should provide data generated by comparable standards, presentation of data at this site currently is restricted to the diffuse sectors - identified as comparable and quantified following a harmonised methodology in the "source apportionment" report published recently by the European Environment Agency (EEA 7/2005). These include the following:

• Total diffuse
• Agriculture
• Natural background losses
• Anthropogenic diffuse sources
• Scattered dwellings

In addition results from a harmonised inventory of the Danube river basin based on the MONERIS model and tested for a number of other European river basins are presented exemplarily to illustrate the possibilities of a pathway related reporting for quantification of releases from diffuse sources such as natural background, agriculture and diffuse urban.

Data are presented for the following pathway categories:

• Erosion
• Surface run-off
• Groundwater
• Tile drainage
• Atmospheric deposition
• Paved urban areas

For the purpose of this project databases from marine and river commissions as well as data bases at Member State level have been screened. Finally the following report has been used as best source for the compilation of comparable data:

• "Source apportionment of nitrogen and phosphorus inputs into the aquatic environment" (EEA 7/2005) published by the European Environment Agency in December 2005.

Data availability

Comparable data on water pollution from diffuse sources for a larger number of European Member States and river basins are currently available for the diffuse source categories "Agriculture", "Anthrogogenic diffuse", Scattered dwellings", "Natural Background" and "Total diffuse" related to the pollutants Nitrogen and Phosphorus.

In addition data for heavy metals (As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Hg, Ni, Pb, Zn) and for pesticides (e.g. Atrazine) as released from diffuse sources are have been reported for certain River Basins. The Dutch Environmental Data Compendium provides information on direct releases from consumers and traffic and transport as diffuse sources at National level for heavy metals and aromatic compounds.

Data

A compilation of data of annual releases is provided in the categories EU overview, Pollutants, Source sectors, Member States, River basins and Pathways, as far as data are available. Please click on the categories to view the tables or use the navigation line on this page.

Results

Here you find a short overview on major results of the inventory of releases to water. For further information and diagrams please click on the pollutant you are interested in.

Diagrams showing the sectoral share for each pollutant can be downloaded at the data inventory. A comprehensive discussion of the data is contained in the Danube report.

It has to be pointed out that the inventory can only represent data already reported and publicly accessible. Therefore data are not complete for all sectors and assessment of shares has to be read with reservation.

Nitrogens (see ):
Based on the data compiled by the European Environment Agency the total area-specific nitrogen loads vary with a factor of more than five for European Seas and large river basins. At the lower end of the range around 5 kg/ha of nitrogen are released annually to the Baltic Sea, 8 kg/ha per year to the Danube River and about 15 kg/ha per year to the North Sea. The releases can be up to 35 kg/ha for other large river basins especially in regions with intensive agriculture. For all countries and catchments examined, agricultural or diffuse losses (agriculture plus background) account for more than 60 % of the total load.

Phosphorus (see ):
In general annual releases of phosphorus into water are significantly lower than for nitrogen. Based on the data compiled by the European Environment Agency the total area-specific phosphorus loads vary with a factor of more than five for European Seas and large river basins. At the lower end of the range about 0.25 kg/ha are annually released into the Baltic Sea, 0.8 kg/ha are released into the Danube river basin and 0.9 kg/ha into the North Sea. The releases can be up to 3 kg/ha other large river basins. For phosphorus, point sources such as households and industry still tend to be the most significant source. However, as point source discharges in many countries have been markedly reduced during the last 15 years, agriculture has sometimes become the main source.