In December 2016, the Environment Agency released new guidance on how to assess the impact of any activity in transitional and coastal waters, aptly referred to as “Clearing the Waters for All”.

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) (2000/60/EC) is an important piece of environmental legislation, aiming to protect, restore and enhance Europe’s aquatic ecosystems.

The overall objective of the WFD is to achieve good status in all inland, transitional, coastal (out to one nautical mile) and ground waters based on a number of ecological and chemical parameters. These parameters range from benthic invertebrate assemblages to dissolved oxygen levels to concentrations of hazardous pollutants.

Activities and developments in the marine environment which could impact WFD parameters should be assessed as part of the licensing process. The assessment should determine whether the activity or development complies with the objectives of the WFD as any deterioration in status, or the prevention of future improvement in status, is not permitted.

In 2010, and then revised in 2012, the Environment Agency published “Clearing the Waters” guidance documents describing how to undertake a WFD compliance assessment for dredging activities in the marine environment (1).

In the absence of formal guidance, “Clearing the Waters” has also influenced WFD assessments for many other developments in estuarine and coastal waters, such as subsea cable installations, cooling water outfalls and piling for construction works.

The guidance uses a series of simple triggers to scope the potential impacts on WFD parameters; however, these thresholds are not intuitive for dredging activities, let alone attempting to shoehorn their application to other types of development.

An update was required to encompass the multitude of activities occurring in the marine environment, to incorporate changes to the building blocks of the WFD since the first cycle of River Basin Management Plans (RBMPs) were published in 2009 and to acknowledge the growing importance of the WFD in marine licensing.

In December 2016, the Environment Agency released new guidance (2) on how to assess the impact of any activity in transitional and coastal waters, aptly referred to as “Clearing the Waters for All”.

The process is now streamlined into three stages (screening, scoping and impact assessment) and new supporting tools are available online. These include:

• a scoping template to record project specific information,
• an increased provision of WFD specific data on Defra’s Magic interactive map (3) to help visualise spatial impact on nearby WFD parameters (in addition to the Environment Agency’s Catchment Data Explorer (4) and.
• a number of databases outlining water body objectives, mitigation measures and habitat abundance.

The new guidance recognises the key receptors to be considered in terms of WFD compliance, namely hydromorphology, biology (habitats and fish), water quality and protected areas. However, despite these apparent advances to the guidance, there are perhaps a few minor shortfalls to iron out going forward.

A common concern previously raised by the Environment Agency has been the potential impact on benthic invertebrates from dredging activities; however, on initial glance it may be unclear where this parameter features in the new guidance.

In contrast, phytoplankton was largely discounted in the old guidance due to the unlikely deterioration in status at the water body level through dredging activity, but this parameter now has added emphasis (e.g. response to thermal plume discharges).

While benthic invertebrates are not explicitly mentioned in the new guidance, the Environment Agency has confirmed that flora and fauna associated with disturbed habitats should be considered in the assessment stage.

A new feature of the guidance involves consideration of invasive non-native species (INNS) at the scoping stage. However, INNS is a highly complex area of study, still in its relative infancy, and the WFD guidance seems only to require a ‘box-ticking exercise’ (e.g. is a biosecurity plan in place?) as opposed to outlining how this should be conducted. This could result in a variety of inputs from the applicant, while the guidance is actually aiming to ensure a proportionate approach.

Finally, one useful aspect of the old guidance was the explanatory notes which provided justification for the specific triggers used to scope certain WFD parameters. This has been omitted from the new guidance; although it is hoped a similar narrative will be included should the new guidance be published as a stand-alone document in the future.

We welcome “Clearing the Waters for All” and believe it will improve the quality and value of WFD assessments in the UK. In some cases, WFD assessments have functioned as mini environmental impact assessments (EIAs) and, therefore, the range of information made available by the Environment Agency should reduce the burden on the applicant. It will be interesting to see how the new guidance is implemented in upcoming WFD compliance assessments and whether it can support the long-term objectives of the WFD in conjunction with developments in the marine environment.

Prepared by David Honey, Planning and Environment Consultant

Header photo courtesy Andrew Pearson

^References

(1) GOV.UK
(2) GOV.UK
(3) MAGIC
(4) Environment Agency