EurEau newsletter - edition 5 - July 2016

Circular Economy
The European Council of national environment ministers adopted their conclusions on the Action Plan of the Circular Economy Package on 20 June. Article 15 is specifically dedicated to water, focusing on water efficiency, resource recovery and water reuse. It also calls for incentives to support the circular economy.

Micropollutants
Dental amalgam
Our position paper on the need to ban dental amalgam to shift to a truly circular economy is available here.
The European Parliament’s ENVI Committee will discuss the report on the Mercury Regulation by the Rapporteur, MEP Stefan Eck (GUE/DE). The Rapporteur is in favour of a ban on dental amalgam. EurEau fully supports his views.
EurEau will work with MEPs in the coming months in order to improve the European Commission’s proposal on Article 10.

Glyphosate
The European Commission decided to extend the authorisation of glyphosate by 18 months, waiting for the ECHA study that could bring clarity in the scientific assessment. EurEau’s position on glyphosate is available on the EurEau website here.

OECD 
The OECD published an interesting article on ‘Stakeholder Engagement for Inclusive Water Governance: Practicing What We Preach’ available here.

Ad-hoc Task Group on Water Reuse
The guidelines on Water Reuse were endorsed by the Water Directors in Amsterdam on 9-10 June 2016. The work will now continue on the standards for agriculture and groundwater recharge with a possible proposal by the European Commission at the beginning of 2017. See our video.

Fertiliser Regulation
The European Sustainable Phosphorus Platform (ESPP) organised a meeting with the European Commission’s DG GROW to discuss the proposed Fertiliser Regulation text (29 June, Brussels). EurEau was invited to present our position. We would like to see sewage sludge included as input material for compost and digestates, advocating that the quality criteria of the recovered product should be the only criteria imposed. Good quality sludge that is produced today allows us to obtain compost and digestates that comply with the proposed regulation. A detailed report will soon be published on the ESPP website and we will inform you as soon as it is publicly available.
The first meeting of the Joint Research Centre’s STRUBIAS working group will be held on 6 - 7 July in Seville, Spain.

Endocrine disruptors
On 15 June 2016, the European Commission finally published in a communication the definition of endocrine disruptive criteria for the application of the Plant Protection Product Regulation and for the Biocide Product Regulation. Attached to these definitions and the communication, the European Commission also published the impact assessment and its executive summary. According to the better regulation approach, it is possible to give feedback as stakeholder by following the link of the definition for the two regulations. The deadline is 28 July. The European Commission also organised a stakeholder conference on 30 June to present these definitions and allow stakeholders to ask questions.

Communications and media
EurEau President Bruno Tisserand makes the case for water reuse in this video. Watch it and share it with your colleagues!


News from our members
SMAT, the water utility of Turin (Italy), provides water for space: water is indeed shipped to the International Space Station. On the 23 June they presented an innovative water outfit to protect astronauts from cosmic rays.

Important dates
6 - 8 July 2016 the 2nd edition of the International Festival of Treatment Plants will take place at the Nosedo plant near Milan.
The event will extend over three days with the involvement of Utilitalia.
For more information consult here.

7 July: Bruno Tisserand, the President of EurEau, will deliver a speech at the General Assembly of the Cercle Français de l'Eau, co-Chaired by former MEP Sophie Auconie.  

6 September: Workshop organised by HCWH on Pharmaceuticals in the Environment – make ideas work. This workshop is by invitation only. Contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

10 September – 29 January: The Municipality of Cremona is organising an exhibition on the engineer Jannello Torriani, who obtained universal popularity thanks to his technological innovations. Among them, especially one won him eternal fame: the hydraulic giant-machine known as the Toledo Device. This was a 300 metre-long snake made out of timber, metal and bricks, capable of elevating water on a slope of a good 100 metres. Cremona is a nice small city at 90 Km south of Milano.

10-11 October: Envicon in Poznan, Poland