Water protection for people and the environment
The European Water Framework Directive provides a legal framework for the protection of water bodies, which is of vital importance for future generations.
The European Water Framework Directive (EU-WFD) came into force on 22 December 2000. It strongly emphasises the idea of river basin management and pursues the core objective of protecting aquatic ecosystems in the interests of sustainable environmental development. In contrast to the previous, more use- and measure-related and sectoral consideration of water bodies, the EU WFD focusses on a comprehensive, integral consideration of the groundwater and surface water systems (flowing waters, standing waters, transitional waters and coastal waters).
This overarching view of the entire water system is logically associated with the expansion of the previously rather administratively orientated and mostly site-specific radii of action to the entire river catchment area. With regard to the EU WFD, ten supra-regional, mostly transnational river basin districts have been defined throughout Germany, which in turn are subdivided into regional management areas for better manageability.
In North Rhine-Westphalia, the Ruhr water system is one such catchment area. According to the requirements of the European Water Framework Directive, the Ruhr catchment area is subdivided as follows:
- 122 water bodies have their own catchment area of more than ten square kilometres and are therefore subject to reporting requirements.
- They have a flow length of around 1,850 kilometres, which corresponds to around 26.5 percent of the Ruhr's total flowing water system of around 7,000 kilometres.
- These 122 water bodies are divided into 243 water bodies, of which 178 are classified as natural and 65 as hydromorphologically heavily modified.
- For groundwater, 30 water bodies were delineated.
The implementation of the EC WFD is the responsibility of the federal states.