Search results for "Water framework directive"
showing 10 items of 59 documents
The social benefits of restoring water quality in the context of the Water Framework Directive: A comparison of willingness to pay and willingness to…
2009
The Water Framework Directive (WFD) is by far the most important piece of water legislation in Europe for the coming decades. Its main aim is to achieve "good ecological status" for all water resources by 2015. The economic valuation of the non-market benefits derived from improving water quality is an important input in assisting the design and implementation of efficient and effective water management policies. In this study, the contingent valuation method has been applied with a double purpose. On the one hand, we have estimated the value of a hypothetical improvement in water quality of a river asking individuals about their willingness to pay, and on the other hand, the issue of exemp…
River Contracts for Innovation in Territorial Governance
2016
Emerged in France in 1980s as agreements oriented to the requalification of rivers and lakes, river contracts represent an important outcome of the decentralization process, developed in Europe in reply to the growing institutional fragmentation. In this scenario, rivers have become a dialectic arena in which the exploitation and management of water resources came to terms with environmental instances, and offered the breeding ground for concerted efforts between policy makers, stakeholders and communities. In this chapter, the analysis is focused on the river contract model and the related set of instruments capable of supporting concerted and participatory management processes both with r…
Biological quality metrics: their variability and appropriate scale for assessing Streams
2006
The concept of spatial scale is at the research frontier in ecology, and although focus has been placed on trying to determine the role of spatial scale in structuring communities, there still is a further need to standardize which organism groups are to be used at which scale and under which circumstances in environmental assessment. This paper contributes to the understanding of the variability at different spatial scales (reach, stream, river basin) of metrics characterizing communities of different biological quality elements (macrophytes, fishes, macroinvertebrates and benthic diatoms) as defined by the Water Framework Directive. For this purpose, high-quality reaches from medium-sized…
River bioassessment and the preservation of threatened species: Towards acceptable biological quality criteria
2010
Abstract A central objective of environmental management is to maintain biodiversity, including populations of threatened species. Freshwater ecosystems are increasingly assessed by their biotic properties, but whether the resulting classifications of biotic condition are sufficient to protect species with conservation status has received very little consideration. We used data from 225 reference and impacted river sites from Finland to examine whether the occurrence and abundance of threatened macroinvertebrate species (TS) are associated with a commonly used estimate of biological condition (Observed-to-Expected number of predicted taxa of macroinvertebrates or O/E-ratio of taxonomic comp…
The relevance of ecological status to ecosystem functions and services in a large boreal lake
2014
Summary Environmental conventions aim to protect ecosystem structures and functions to provide goods and services for mankind. The degree of aquatic ecosystem naturalness, or ecological status as it is defined in the Water Framework Directive (WFD) of the European Union, is notionally linked to supplies of ecosystem services. In practice, these links have rarely been documented or even investigated, and to justify conservation and management objectives based on the status indicators, it is essential to demonstrate their relationships to ecosystem functions and services. The WFD requires member states to classify their surface waters aiming to achieve good ecological status of water bodies. …
Cost-effectiveness analysis of sewer mining versus centralized wastewater treatment: Case study of the Arga river basin, Spain
2015
ABSTRACT:In the context of the EU Water Framework Directive, a Cost-Effectiveness Analysis (CEA) was performed to compare centralized and decentralized wastewater treatment strategies aimed to improve the ecological status of a Spanish river. The implementation of several hybrid membrane bioreactors within the urban framework for sewer mining (SM) was compared with the more common wastewater treatment plant enlargement option. The assessment ranked 6 alternatives based on 12 potential scenarios, aimed at narrowing the uncertainty of the CEA. The cost analysis illustrated that SM is the most expensive option regarding both investment and operation and maintenance costs. However, the effectiv…
Economic feasibility study for wastewater treatment: a cost-benefit analysis.
2010
Water resource management should be made from a multidisciplinary perspective. In this sense, economic research into the design and implementation of policies for the efficient management of water resources has been emphasized by the European Water Framework Directive (WFD). Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is one of the more widely accepted economic instruments since it is a rational and systematic decision-making support tool. Moreover, the wastewater treatment process has significant associated environmental benefits. However, these benefits are often left uncalculated because they have no market value. In this paper, using the concept of shadow price, a quantification of the environmental be…
Hybrid moving bed biofilm reactors: a pilot plant experiment.
2008
The growing increment of the urbanization and on the other hand, the even more strict effluent limits imposed by the Water Framework Directive for the receiving water body quality state have lead to a need of upgrading several existing WWTP. With this respect HMBBR systems are an innovative solution since allow to upgrade existing high loaded WWTP without building new tanks. However, some uncertainties in their design, maintenance as well as performance have to be addressed due to their recent acquisition compared with well consolidated technologies such as activated sludge systems. In this light, a data gathering campaign on a HMBBR pilot plant has been performed. The aim was to detect the…
Modelling of hybrid moving bed biofilm reactors: a pilot plant experiment.
2007
In recent years there has been an increasing interest in the development of hybrid biofilm reactors, especially in the upgrading of existing WWTP that are no longer able to respect concentration limits. In fact, today's challenge is the achievement of a good aquatic state for the receiving water bodies according to the Water Framework Directive requirements, which indeed limit even more the continuous emissions, i.e. coming from WWTP. This paper presents the setting up of a mathematical model for the simulation of a hybrid MBBR system; the model calibration/validation has been carried out considering a field gathering campaign on an experimental pilot plant. The main goal is to gain insight…
Life Cycle Costing: a tool to manage the urban water cycle
2013
The Water Framework Directive puts much emphasis on the role of economics for improving the management of water resources. In the context of the urban water cycle, previous studies have proven that Life Cycle Costing (LCC) is a useful methodology for assessing the costs of the whole cycle. However, there are many elements and factors that can influence the results of the LCC assessment and therefore affect the decision making process. The main aim of this study is to identify the main difficulties for carrying out LCC studies in the urban water cycle and to propose some solutions to overcome them. Hence, the conclusions obtained from the assessment of several case studies will be more robus…