HEADLINES
Commission viewpoint on contaminated
sediment
Mr. Bart Staes, member of the European Parliament, asked the European Commission (EC) to respond to written questions related to
contaminated sediment in Europe. Mr. Stavros Dimas, EC Commissioner for the Environment, responded on behalf of the Commission. Some quotes from his
response:
- “The Commission is aware that polluted sediments are a problem for water quality across the
EU”
- “It is currently not possible to set quality standards for sediments”
- “It will be left to the Member
States to identify sediments where remedial action is needed on the basis of the results from the ecological monitoring under the Water Framework
Directive.”
- “Measures need to be coordinated in an international river basin management plan”.
- “The
Commission will continue its efforts to overcome the lack of knowledge on sediment quality in the EU”.
- “The Commission will consider
whether an appropriate research project in the action on support for policy under the 6th Framework Programme may be another possibility to address this
issue”.
- “In that respect the research projects carried out in the context of the SedNet activities have been very valuable.”
The full EC response and the complete EP questions are available at:
http://www.sednet.org/newsitem.asp?ni=130
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Final SedNet booklet &
conference presentations at website
Between 2002 and 2005 scientific, policy and regulatory aspects of contaminated sediments and dredged
material were addressed in 17 workshops and 3 conferences organised by SedNet. Europe’s leading scientists and major sediment managers contributed to these
SedNet activities. The results are summarised in the SedNet booklet “Contaminated Sediment in European River Basins”. The comprehensive results will be
published in 2005 by Elsevier as a series of four books.
The final version of the booklet can be downloaded through:
http://www.sednet.org/newsitem.asp?ni=125.
A printed version, including a CD-ROM
with SedNet documents, is expected to be available in March 2005.
The booklet gives a short, state-of-the-art overview of the main scientific,
policy and regulatory issues on contaminated sediments, based on the results of the SedNet network activities. In particular, this booklet describes the main
sources, transport processes and impacts of contaminated sediment and describes the main methods used to evaluate (including chemical analysis, bioassays and
impact assessment) and manage (such as treatment, disposal and beneficial uses) contaminated sediment in river basins. The booklet also presents the main
policies and regulations that relate to contaminated sediment (including the EU Water Framework Directive) and describes recent developments in sediment
management, such as the move towards the basin-scale approach, the use of risk-based management and the need for stakeholder participation in the
decision-making process.
As a result of the activities of SedNet, and especially the workshops and conferences, SedNet has developed the following
main recommendations (more specific recommendations are given in Chapter 6 of the booklet):
Towards European policy development: Further
develop and eventually integrate sustainable sediment management into the European Water Framework Directive and related policy and
legislation.
Towards sediment management: Find management solutions that carefully balance social, economic and environmental values and are
set within the context of the whole river system.
Towards research: Improve our understanding of the relation between sediment contamination
(hazard) and its actual impact to the functioning of ecosystems (ecological status) and develop strategies to assess and manage the risks involved.
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SedNet conference
presentations
The PowerPoint presentations of the speakers at the 3rd SedNet Conference in Venice at November 25th and 26th, 2004, are now
available as PDFs through the SedNet website: http://www.sednet.org/final.asp
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SedNet suggestions for
FP7
The European Commission is undertaking a process to identify thematic domains for future European support under the 7th Framework
Programme. It is essential to identify those domains where support at European level is most needed and will have the greatest impact, as set out in the
Communication Science and Technology, the key to Europe’s future — Guidelines for future European Union policy to support research. This concerns support
where thematic domains will be predetermined at the start of the Framework Programmes. This is particularly important for future support to transnational
collaborative research
(see: http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/future/themes/index_en.cfm)
SedNet responded to the call for input (suggestions, ideas) to
FP7. The SedNet response can be downloaded through:
http://www.sednet.org/newsitem.asp?ni=126
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CEDA news
Dredging within the Water Framework Directive: A crisis
waiting to happen? This advancement note (No. 6, July 2004) is prepared by the Environmental Steering Committee of the Central Dredging association (CEDA)
and can be downloaded through:
http://www.sednet.org/newsitem.asp?ni=127
November 3rd – 4th , 2005: CEDA Dredging Days. “Dredging: The Extremes”, Ahoy
Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The conference will be held in conjunction with Europort maritime 2005 (1-5 November).
First Announcement - Call for
Papers, see:
www.dredging.org/DredgingDays05.htm
WODCON XVII (27 September - 1 October 2004) has adopted the Hamburg Declaration. The
Declaration recognizes that gaps exist in knowledge and communication between stakeholders and disciplines and declares WODA's commitment to assist in
closing the "gaps" by using an integrated approach to dredging and navigation projects. The declaration along with the closely related WODA Environmental
policy, are attached and can be viewed at:
http://www.woda.org/env.htm
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Outcome Speakers Corners at
SedNet conference
At the end of the 2nd day (November 26th, 2004) of the 3rd SedNet conference the audience (i.e. SedNet) was kindly
invited to visit one or more of the three speakers corners. The audience was then ‘stimulated’ to help finish the SedNet statements visualised in that
corner. Hereafter the suggestions from the audience are summarised below each statement.
Corner 1: Sediment and EU policy (moderator: Johan
van Veen)
SedNet should stimulate the attention of EU policy makers towards integration of sustainable sediment management in the EU Water
Framework Directive by...:
- Translation of the SedNet messages into an action plan towards WFD (11 votes pro this
statement)
- Face-to-face lobbying of all stakeholders (5 votes)
- Making a film on the SedNet messages and distribute it in EU
Parliament (5 votes)
- Let the swimmer (i.e. stunt at conference) swim to Brussels (4 votes)
- Preparation of a WFD Sediment
Daughter Directive (3 votes)
- Member State (ministries of environment) lobbying in Brussels (3 votes)
- Sending SedNet
booklet and extensive mailing list to EC scientific officer + nice brochure and then?? (3 votes)
- First bringing SedNet messages to national
ministries (2 votes)
- Making test proposals to WFD (2 votes) Opening of a SedNet-office in Brussels (2 votes)
- Stimulation
of collaboration among countries (2 votes)
- Bringing sediment issues into river basin reports (1 vote)
Corner 2: Testing
sustainability principles in practice (Moderator: Adriaan Slob)
SedNet should test and improve its sustainable sediment management principles
by ...:
- Starting ‘national SedNet’s’, like in Spain, and/or by starting ‘correspondence groups’ on a national
level
- Applying the principles in basin cases. Start, e.g., with Elbe (sediment quality problems) and Ebro (sediment quantity problems).
Learn from theses cases and then apply what you have learned on bigger basins like the Danube
- Communication about the principles
(communicate, provoke, debate, ask for response) with policymakers, stakeholders and politicians
- (new) EU funded, sediment management
related projects, like the FP6 Integrated Project AquaTerra (see: http://www.eu-aquaterra.de/)
- Getting
mandates from water managers and by getting advisory positions
Corner 3: SedNet continuity (Moderator: Jos Brils)
SedNet
should continue its networking activities by ...:
- Sending the conference swimmer to all EU member States to swim in their
rivers
- Continuing the dialogue with EC DG Environment
- Receiving additional funding of the EC for another 3
years
- Continuing the website and make it a ‘who-is-who’ for problem owners
- Maintenance of a SedNet
secretariat
- Organising, at least, one major network event each year, such as a conference
- Forming of national core groups
on sediment management issues. Delegates of these groups may then be the correspondents to SedNet
- Continuation as an Expert Advisory group
for sediments under the SETAC umbrella
- Cooperating with Baltic Sea Science Congress (BSSC)
- Cooperating with FP6
Integrated Projects such as AquaTerra and Modelkey
- Cooperating with national sediment networks
- Not continuing as SedNet
but as BasinNet, with an integrated focus on ‘water-soil-sediment-groundwater-industry-agriculture’
- Identifying/getting stakeholders, such
as port authorities and national governments, to pay for the continuation of SedNet and for further development of sediment management
approaches
- Expanding with members from ‘missing’ EU Member States and/or by a special focus on Eastern Europe. Thus it must get financial
support from the EC
- Writing a proposal for a new FP6 Integrated Project
- Organising summer schools or training activities
in the field of sediment management and treatment. E.g. set up for young scientists and consultants, with special attention to people from Eastern
Europe.
- Starting pilot case studies on a basin-wide level, in line with the needs for preparation of River Basin Management Plans.
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SedNet
continues…
The SedNet stakeholders panel and former SedNet project contractors meet in Venice on March 23rd and 24th, 2005 in order to
define the scope of SedNet from 2005, to set the new network structure and to safeguard the finances. The suggestions above will be taken into account.
Hence, a new action plan will be defined concerning: 1) the pro-active dissemination (with backup from EC DG Research) of the results as summarised in the
SedNet booklet, 2) the attraction and commitment of vital (new) parties and concerning 3) new activities, which also depends on the demands of key financing
SedNet parties.
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Booklet
“Building with Dredged Material” now available
Recently a booklet "Building with dredged material - daily practice !" was published (in
English) by Rijkswaterstaat in The Netherlands. It gives examples of Dutch projects with beneficial use of dredged material. Hopefully you will benefit from
the knowledge and the ideas from the projects presented in the book and use them in planning your own projects so that dredged material is applied more in
the future. We need to see dredged material as it is: not as a waste, but as a resource to be used as a building material with an extra dimension. The
booklet can be obtained by sending an email to:
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
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Upcoming events
2005
- February 10th - 12th,
2005:
Hotel Santon, Brno, Czech Republic. Workshop "Integrated sediment and soil assessment". Organised by the EU-DG Research Centre of Excellence
for Environmental Chemistry and Ecotoxicology (RECTOX), Masaryk University Brno, together with the EC DG Research and DG Environment, in collaboration with
SECOTOX - International Society of Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety.
More details: recetox.muni.cz
or directly recetox.muni.cz/coe/index.php?id=50
- March 14th - 17th, 2005:
15th Annual West Coast Conference on Soils,
Sediments and Water, Mission Valley Marriott, San Diego, Ca, USA. The conference is organised by AEHS (Association for Environmental Health & Sciences).
You are invited to submit an abstract before July 9th, 2004. Please follow the abstract submission guidelines on the website (www.aehs.com).
The complete Call for Papers brochure can be found on:
m1e.net/c?8209797-KJ56fHAwOnOMg%40557057-VMM4AGisekgf6
- April 11th – 13th, 2005:
Third International Conference on
WATER RESOURCES MANAGEMENT, Tivoli Almansor Hotel in the Algarve, Portugal. The conference is organised by: the Wessex Institute of Technology, UK and the
University of Coimbra, Portugal. Conference papers will be reviewed by members of the International Scientific Advisory Committee (ISAC) and other
colleagues.
The conference website has full details about the conference objectives, topics and submission requirements: www.wessex.ac.uk/conferences/2005/waterresources2005/cfp.html
- April 13th -15th, 2005:
CABERNET 2005: The
International Conference on Managing Urban Land, Waterfront Hall Conference Centre, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK. Deadline for abstract submissions is
October 15th, 2004.
Registration and Accommodation details can be found on www.cabernet.org.uk/conference2005
- April 17th -20th, 2005:
Environmental Security in Harbors and Coastal
Areas: Management using Comparative Risk Assessment and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis. , Thessalonica, Sani Beach Hotel, Greece, NATO Advanced Research
Workshop.
More info:
www.saniresort.gr or www.risktrace.com/nato
- April 28th, 2005:
First international
conference “EU Enlargement from a Business Perspective”, Keszthely, Hungary.
Information about the event and Early Bird registration is available
through the website:
http://www.eucenter.org/training/training.php
- October 3rd – 7th, 2005:
May 16th – May 20th , 2005
International Conference on Engineering for Waste Treatment in City Hall of Albi. We expect that the WasteEng Conference will bring together representatives
from industry, academia, governments and other sectors related to Chemical Engineering, Civil Engineering and Environmental Engineering and others sectors
concerned by Waste Treatment and Use.
More info: http://www.enstimac.fr/heberges/wasteeng2005/index.html
- May 22nd - 26th, 2005:
5th SETAC Europe Annual Meeting,
Lille, France. Deadline for abstract submission was 30 November 2004.
More information about the meeting can be found via:
http://www.setaceumeeting.org
- June 1st – 2nd , 2005:
Netherlands
Scientific Symposium SOIL & WATER. “Woudschoten” conference centre in Zeist, The Netherlands. This symposium offers an opportunity to PhD-students and
Post-docs of soil and water research programmes in The Netherlands to present and discuss the goals and results of their research by oral presentations and
posters. It also aims at building a network of young scientists to mutual benefit. The symposium will be organised according to the following themes:
Sustainable development of flood plains; Food web and food chains; Subsurface processes; Soil & sediments.
More info: http://www.skbodem.nl/ and then go to ‘Agenda’ and subsequently to ‘Juni’ and ‘Symposium Soil &
water’.
- June 20th – 21st, 2005:
1st International Workshop on Liquid Chromatography – Tandem Mass Spectrometry for
Screening and Trace Level Quantification in Environmental and Food Samples, Barcelona. More info:
http://www.cid.csic.es/barcelona2005/home.htm
- July 19th - 22nd,
2005:
Watershed Management Conference, "Managing Watersheds for Human and Natural Impacts: Engineering, Ecological, and Economic Challenges."
Sponsored by the Environmental and Water Resources Institute (EWRI) of the American Society of Civil Engineers.
http://www.asce.org/conferences/watershedmanagement2005/
- August 28th - September 2nd, 2005:
10th Annual
International Symposium on the Interactions between Sediment and Water and the International Association for Sediment Water Science. Lake Bled, Slovenia.
The complete Call for Papers brochure can be found on:
www.wsc.monash.edu.au/iasws/2005symposium.htm
- September 1st - 3rd, 2005:
9th International
Conference on Environmental Science and Technology (9CEST-2005), organised by the University of the Aegean and Global- NEST at the Rhodes island, Greece. It
is also planned to organise a session on the "E.U. Priority Substances". Details are available at the web site http://www.gnest.org/cest
- September 4th – 8th, 2005:
International symposium on
Wetland Pollutant Dynamics and Control (WETPOL) in Gent (Belgium).
More information is given on biomath.ugent.be/wetpol.
The flyer (pdf format) can also be retrieved from the news section
of the SedNet website: http://www.sednet.org/news.asp
- September 6th – 9th, 2005:
3rd International Conference River Basin
Management including all aspects of hydrology, ecology, environmental management, flood plains and wetlands, Bologna, Italy.
For details about the
conference objectives, topics and submission requirements: www.wessex.ac.uk/conferences/2005/rm05/index.html
- September 12th -14th, 2005:
Workshop in
Geo-environment and Geotechnics, Milos island, Greece. Detailed information about the topics, the committees and the call for papers is available on the web
site: http://milos.conferences.gr/geoenv2005. The deadline for abstracts submission is 22 April 2005.
The abstract submission form can be obtained
from
http://milos.conferences.gr/index.php?id=2380
- October 3rd – 7th, 2005:
9th International FZK/TNO
Conference on Soil-Water Systems, Bordeaux, France. This 9th edition is organised in co-operation with BRGM, France. Deadline for abstract submission is
December 7th, 2004.
For detailed information on ConSoil and the Call for Abstracts visit:
www.consoil.de/consoil/call.html
- October 17th – 20th,
2005:
21st Annual International Conference on Soils, Sediments and Water, University of Massachusetts Amherst.
More info & call
for papers: http://www.umasssoils.com/
- November 3rd – 4th,
2005:
CEDA Dredging Days: Dredging: The Extremes, Ahoy Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The conference will be held in conjunction with Europort
maritime 2005 (1-5 November).
First Announcement - Call for Papers, see:
www.dredging.org/DredgingDays05.htm
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Web site of the month
SedNet website: www.SedNet.org
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Other interesting links
EEP website: www.eep.org
The EEP is a Europe-wide association of thirteen environmental magazines. Each member
is considered the leader in its country and is committed to building links between 400,000 environmental professionals across Europe in both the public and
private sectors. The EEP is unique in bringing together the leading national business- to business magazines as an expert network for the dissemination of
high quality environmental information throughout Europe.
EUGRIS website: www.eugris.info
EUGRIS is a platform for explaining, searching and disseminating the state of the
art in technical guidance, policy, research and funding for land and groundwater management. The gateway combines a technical and policy compendium, a search
engine and a dissemination tool in one central place.
NICOLE website: www.Nicole.org
NICOLE is a leading forum on contaminated land management in Europe, promoting
co-operation between industry, academia and service providers on the development of sustainable technologies. Please visit their website to see what’s new.
E.g. to download the report of the NICOLE Workshop: Sediments and sludges: an issue for industry? 13-14 May 2004, Frankfurt, Germany.
WATER AND SOIL TIMES: http://forum.europa.eu.int/Public/irc/rtd/eesdwatkeact/library
WATER AND SOIL TIMES a newsletter
for the "Water Cycle and Soil Related Aspects" activities in the European Commissions Directorate General for Research. Issues can be obtained through the
link above.
Contributions for future issues of this newsletter can be suggested to:
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
US Army ERDC website: http://el.erdc.usace.army.mil/
The U.S. Army Engineer
Research and Development Center announces the publication of a new sediment related documents and/or events on its Web site.
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