European Union Experience Developing Nationwide Groundwater Monitoring for Assuring Protection and Sustainability – Examples From Selected Member States

 The Water Framework Directive (WFD) of the European Union (EU) is a comprehensive piece of legislation that sets out “good status” objectives for all waters in Europe. The EU-developed process helps to assess groundwater status and identify trends in pollutant concentrations, thereby supporting the decision making behind “programs of measures” implemented to achieve WFD status objectives, and the associated allocation of resources.

 To address WFD challenges, Member States completed the first phase of the directive implementation in 2009, which involved River Basin characterization, establishment of monitoring networks, implementation of sampling programs, definition of “programs of measures” (setting out how status objectives will be achieved), and development of River Basin Management Plans for the first River Basin Management cycle 2009-2015, to be repeated every 6 years.

 WFD implementation has proven to be both technically and administratively challenging, thus the EU experience provides a useful “model” for development and maintenance of monitoring networks in non-EU countries, including the U.S. This paper, therefore, presents the approach taken by selected Member States to address the groundwater monitoring requirements of the WFD. The approach includes practical guidance and technical specifications for groundwater monitoring that build on and complement WFD monitoring requirements.  This documentation provides specific guidelines for establishing groundwater monitoring programs, including measurement of abstractions, levels, spring flows, and quality.

 The guidance documents also discuss WFD quantitative and qualitative status objectives, “tests” that are carried out on monitoring data to classify “status”, including data trend analyses, along with tracking associated costs. One important and specific outcome of such analyses are characterizations that help water resource managers implement measures for meeting drinking water-protected area objectives. In addition, because the monitoring can be very expensive, the guidelines focus on establishing cost-effective, risk-based, and appropriately-focused groundwater monitoring to enable WFD objectives to be met.