In the Community Environmental Action Programs, European Community Directives concerning various aspects of water pollution are implemented. This has brought about a sea change in the legal regulation in the United Kingdom by introducing binding quantitative standards for water quality.
Many of the EEC Directives on water pollution contain measurable quality standards for different categories of water such as drinking water, bathing water, etc. according to its use.
The Directives divide the polluting chemicals into two broad categories. List I or the ‘ Black List’ covers the most toxic chemicals. List II or the ‘ Grey List’ contains chemicals, which are less dangerous. The purpose of the Directive is to eliminate pollution caused by the black listed chemicals and to reduce pollution from ‘Grey List’ chemicals.
The EEC has agreed upon two alternative approaches to tackle pollution caused by toxic chemicals in the ‘ Black List’. For each toxic substance a minimum emission standard for the actual discharge point has been set in terms of a ‘ Limit Value’. Member States can adopt higher standards but can never go below it, irrespective of the nature of receiving waters.
However, UK had argued at the EEC that even such minimum emission norms would be sub optimal in many circumstances and insisted on standards of the receiving waters instead of the discharge themselves into the same.
Eventually Member States of the EEC have the option to choose either of the aforesaid routes. Accordingly British standards focus on the water quality of the receiving environment rather than the discharge themselves.
