31/03/09
Innovative and difficult, the Water Framework Directive is yet helping us understand nature better and work more effectively for a sustainable environment.
Artists and dreamers sometimes see further into things than the rest of us. TS Eliot memorably revealed our insouciant attitude to nature when he wrote about rivers:
I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong brown god – sullen, untamed and intractable....
If Eliot’s 'brown god...keeping his seasons and rages' is the seer’s warning against complacency, the WFD is our practical response.
In December the Environment Agency, the 'competent authority' in England and Wales, published draft River Basin Management Plans (RBMPs). An official launch of the consultation was snowed off in February but is now running, with responses needed by June.
The WFD was always different from other water legislation. Above all, economics was integral, not a sub-plot, in the story of 'good status for all water bodies'. A fresh approach was required to combine best thinking on meeting human need with respect for 'untamed and intractable' nature.
It was never going to be a stroll along the river, but how are we doing?
Water UK WFD Conference, Wednesday 4 June
UK government and European Commission representatives speak at a critical point in the RBMP consultation.
