Joint SOE Drafting Group and Eionet Workshop

Joint SOE Drafting Group and Eionet Workshop

13 - 14 November 2006

Conference Room

EEA, Kongens Nytorv 6, Copenhagen,

Workshop Report

Final Draft

Prepared by

Tim Lack Manager ETC Water

and

Beate Werner, EEA

Access to Documentation

This workshop report and all presentations and other documentation can be found on the WFD CIS CIRCA system (password protected access for SOER network participants) at:

and on the EEA CIRCA system (unrestricted access for Eionet network participants) at:

Workshop Agenda

The agenda of the workshop is given in Annex 1.

Participants

There were 50 participants from 29 countries (and DG ENV, EEA, JRC and ETC Water) representing both networks (EEA’s Eionet and WFD CIS SOE Drafting Group). The list of participants and their contact details are given in Annex 2.

The meeting was co-chaired by Beate Werner (EEA) and Tim Lack (ETC Water). Presentations were made by Beate Werner and Stefan Jensen (EEA), Jorge Rodriguez-Romero (DG ENV WFD Team), Steve Nixon (ETC Water), Susanne Boutrop (NERI DK), Volker Mohaupt (Federal Ministry of the Environment, DE) and Rene Lalement (Ministry of Ecology and Sustainable Development, FR).

Workshop Proceedings

The first Day of the joint workshop was dedicated to the discussions of outputs of the SOE Drafting Group so far:

• Task 1 Clarification of Reporting Streams
• Task 2 Updated Guidance on Reporting
• Task 3 Guidance on the Scope of the SOE Parameters

The text of Task 3 Guidance paper was available on line and on screen and many textual amendments were made by Steve Nixon in answer of the comments made before the meeting and during the session on Task 3.

The guidance notes for Task 4 Data Processing, Handling and Reporting and Task 5 Technical Integration are less developed, although the software tools are reasonably well developed, and these were discussed in a more general way on Day 2.

Day 2 began with an unscheduled discussion on the relationship between Compliance and SOE data at the request of some participants.

DAY 1;

Session 1; Welcome and Introduction

Tim Lack welcomed participants and reminded them this was the first joint meeting of the SOER and Eionet-Water networks of the Commission and EEA although there was a back–to-back meeting of the two groups when the last Eionet-water Workshop was held in November 2005.

Beate Werner welcomed the participants on behalf of the EEA and gave an overview of the history and the development of Eionet-Water in the light of the implementation of the WFD. The Eionet priority data flows have been endorsed by EEA Management Board to feed the development of the EEA’s Core Set of Indicators.. The conceptual approach of the WFD relating to hydrographical units (Water Body and River Basin) and the type specific assessment made the updating of Eionet water possible and necessary. (Slides are available on Circa)

Jorge Rodriguez-Romero (JRR) gave a presentation on the development of the national monitoring networks, largely based on the outcome of the workshop held in Brussels, April 2006. (Slides are available on Circa).

In the discussion questions were raised on the criteria of establishment of the monitoring sites, in particular the geographical spread and the distribution between surveillance and operational sites. This would influence also the selection of Eionet – water sites. Depending on member States interpretation surveillance and operational sites might reflect a different range of statuses and different monitoring frequencies.

DG ENV together with EEA stressed, that indeed there might be different approaches to surveillance and operational monitoring in the Member States, but for the SOE assessments and the Eionet – water stations it is important to choose a sub-set of representative sites covering all statuses and all types of Water Bodies in the River basin district/country. Some countries have indicated that Eionet stations will be included in their surveillance networks

Session 2: to communicate the ongoing processes, activites and outputs of the SOE- Reporting Drafting Group

Beate Werner presented the outcomes of the work under Task1, “clarification of reporting streams” and Task 2 “Overview of existing reporting guidance”. Both tasks provided papers, which will be part of the later Guidance document. There were no further discussion of the documents all participants were satisfied with the final versions of Tasks 1 and 2.

The workshop discussed in detail the draft of the paper under Task 3, the description of the future SOE/ Eionet-water parameter section by section

Steve Nixon presented an overview of comments made at and after the last SOE Drafting Group meeting and how they are taken into account in the new version of thepaper.(Slides on Circa on the significant changes to the draft).

Task 3 paper,Section1: Introduction and Table 1 Overview of the Reporting Sheets

Changes have been agreed to the text regarding clarifying that typology information is needed for contextual/comparative reasons (type specific assessments).The rest of the section was agreed.

Section 2:Monitoring Sites to obtain representative Information for SOE assessments

Section 2.1 and 2.2 on EEA assessments and theinformation needed were largely agreed with minor editorial changes.

In section 2.3 on the relation between monitoring sites, determinands and water bodies, figure 2 needed some clarification regarding the cases displayed. It was stressed that this is only explanatory and not all cases appear necessarilyequally often.

In section 2.4, Options for the treatment of data before reporting, the horizontal and vertical disaggregation needed to be clarified. Horizontally several sub-sites could well be aggregated without losing information relevant for the EU assessment, whereas the vertical disaggregation need to be kept to take into account cases of hypoxia also in lakes.
Maximum values are not needed in addition to the annual mean, as they don’t give added value to the high percentiles.

In section 2.5, criteria for the monitoring sites to be used for EEA/SOE assessments, it was discussed for which sizes and types of water bodies the site should be representative. It was clarified that not all countries have all types of WBs but should represent the types in their national part of the River basin, the reference to the comparable sub-unit (e.g. a certain national or regional part of a larger transboundary river Basin) could help. With respect to the size, small upstream as well as larger down stream water bodies should be represented.

Section 2.6 Additional information to specify criteria, was agreed without discussion

For the Criteria for the monitoring sites for Groundwater (section 2.7) again the resulting amount of SOE monitoring sites was discussed. Germany asked for more specific criteria to be used for the communication to the “Bundesländer”. EEA answered that the criteria outlined in section 2.5 for surface waters generally apply also to groundwater, even if the representativity is less clear as the delineation of groundwater bodies is not as clear defined.

Steve Nixon presented a paper on “Estimation of ability of the present number of Eionet-water stations to determine national mean concentrations of different determinands. (Slides available on Circa)
Member States asked for time to comment on the paper. It is not the number of stations that is important, it is the number of water bodies that are covered.

To finalise the discussion on the criteria and the representative set of SOE stations a tour de table with all representatives was made to obtain a European-wide view on the development of the national monitoring networks and the possible future selection of Eionet-Water. The participants were requested to answer the following questions:

1. How many Eionet-Water stations will you have in your 2007 monitoring network?
2. How does this compare with the previous monitoring network?
3. What will you deliver (in terms of parameters/determinands) in the 2007 water priority data flows to SOE-WISE?
4. How well does this cover all water categories and types of water body of all statuses?

It was emphasised that all responses would be treated as for information only and not binding commitments on the countries.

The responses were summarised in tabular form, and the participants checked the details during the workshop. The table is given in Annex 3

DAY 2

The second day’s discussion started with an unscheduled discussion on the relation between SOE and compliance reporting. This was discussed earlier in connection to the task 1 paper but it was felt that more clarification is needed.

Participants (e.g. IE, NL; DE) expressed their concern about the use and interpretation of the data send to EEA, if it will be directly used in the process of compliance checking and when will it go to the public. This uncertainty might make member States reluctant to make their data available.

Local issues have to be fully understood when developing assessments and interpret the data respective the state of environment they should describe.

One of the major fears is the possibility of different outcomes on the national and the EU level assessment and this would irritated the relationships with the Commission orthe public. Communication is important between Commission and the country directly before taking infringement procedures (NL), this might lead then to the EEAdata anyhow, but the country is informed about the open questions. France proposed to establish clear business roles for the use of data in WISE.

The Commission expressed understanding for the fear of the MSs that conclusions from EEA will be different from their own.This would be quite natural, because there are different ways of interpreting the data. The EEA analysis is a European-wide approach, so it is more focusing on comparison between regions and River Basins then the national assessments. The analyses are different and the purposes are different. Regarding the nature of the SOE-reporting under the WISE, the Commission clarified that the data discussed here are definitely voluntary as are the reporting sheets that are developed in the Working Group D. SOE data are in first instance not for compliance checking. The compliance checking is a process in several steps. If there appear no problems, then no in-depth analysis is necessary, if there are ambiguities, then the commission will use different sources of information anyhow, between them SOE data also from national level as available on most websites. The information on results from monitoring stations will not be asked in the RBMP reporting when it is reported to EEA. The focus should be on work based on a transparent basis, from both sides, Commission and Member States.

These steps of compliance checking are explained in a figure (see below) showed and discussed in the SOE-group earlier (showed here again).This together with more conceptual background on the use of obligatory and mandatory data will be put also to the Working Group D and Steering Coordination Group for endorsement.

EEA stressed that the purpose of SOE assessments is a wider European view, providing a broader picture e.g. on the transboundary aspects of agriculture, and not the replication of assessments done on national level. It is also not intended to use the SOE data for direct compliance checking for the Commission. The SOE data flow towards EEA is and stays a voluntary data flow, the assessments will be consulted with the countries as EEA is always doing country reviews for all assessments derived from Member State’s data. This counts for the reports as well as for the results of the core set indicators. The wider publication and dissemination of aggregated assessments to the wider public happens only after this country review. The direct involvement of the public on national level with more detailed information, also including plans of measures has to happen in the scope of the public participation anyway, but this is responsibility of the Member States. The availability of SOE data for all EU-level institutions should furthermore facilitate the good understanding and interpretation of the data, also between the Member States and the Commission. The Relationship between SOE and compliance data will also be further discussed and agreed in the Working Group D and the Steering Co-ordination Group. The Commission is preparing a paper on the use of data in WISE.

The meeting then reverted to the scheduled agenda.

Discussion on section 3

The Workshop discussed the reporting sheets listed in section 3 of the paper sheet by sheet. Steve Nixon (ETC) gave an overview of each of the sheets in Section 3

The discussion started with the two sheets on surface waters (1 and 2, Nutrients and hazardous substances) and turned then to the 3 general sheets 14, 15 and 16 to cover the more general aspects.

A general question was the level of detail for the sampling method to be reported. This is needed only as contextual information to ensure comparability between countries, so the reference to agreed quality standards would be sufficient.

Another question the group agreed on after short discussions was the use of the half of the limit of detection value.

The sheet 14 shows site characteristic and proxy pressure information. The combination of these two in one sheet is a historical development, as the proxy pressure in Eionet water was understood as site characteristic. The proxy pressure calculation done on EU-level from EEA side as starting point to support the assessments will use the CORINE land cover information, but also the information available from the countries from article 5. Information from the UWWTD data and PRTR will also be used. Before further used in the assessments this will be given to the countries for validation.

The typology information should also be included here. The chemical typology factors need to be moved here.

To reflect the results from the intercalibration typology factors thecolour for rivers and lakes should be included as an average and as site characteristic. Again this is meant as contextual information and has not the aim to derive the typology. EEA also doesn’t ask for DO concentration to derive pictures of DO depletion (this would need to be related to the reference DO conditions). In the future development of assessments it might be worthwhile to think about including DO depletion in bottom water as own information in form of an indicator.

The frequency of reporting needs to be reported as contextual information for each quality element to support the timely aggregation and long term averages

The sheet 15 reflects only information asked for under Article 8, so this can not be changed here but needs to be used as it is reported by countries.

The information collected with Sheet 16 - DQ Data Quality is needed to reflect in EEA assessments what level of quality control is done at the national level. The DQI is reported to NFPs at Eionet meetings and allows comparisons to be made between countries. The information asked for in the sheet is highly aggregated and the answer for the 8 questions shouldn’t take to much time. However it was noted that the methodological quality information for the pressure information not reflects the same level of quality assurance.

As next the two sheets on groundwater were discussed. For both nutrient and hazardous substances the vertical stratification of the reported values needs to be carefully considered. Only in cases were countries prefer to deliver more disaggregated values, EEA would do the aggregation.The countriesshould do the aggregationusing the local knowledge, but comparable methods.

The sheets 9 should use the term “hazardous substances” throughout instead of priority substances.

Session 3: Review of the reporting sheets under development

The data asked for in the Sheet 3 on State and quantity of water resources was agreed to be largely from a separate system based on the national hydrological and meteorological networks. The subset consists of daily data. The sits should be ideally liked to quality sites, but seldom are. The data should be reported by hydrological calendar year not EEA is in contact with link with ESTAT because they ask for water quantity information in the biennial ESTAT/OECD Joint Questionnaire. Another contact is WMO, which too will be ask for their feedback on this. Beate Werner asks the participants to hand this sheet to their national hydrological experts for a view. (There are or should be the Eionet NRCs on Water Quantity).

On Sheet 4, Loads, discharges and emissions of pollutants to surface waters it was agreed to Delete the section on p30 on helping to elaborate the national programmes of measures as this is not a EEA responsibility. France proposal to use the comparable sub units instead of NUTS as spatial aggregation unit was agreed.

Germany raised the question to rather use 5 year means for the calculation of the diffuse loads as the annually calculation is not feasible because quite time consuming.