Meanwhile, this belongs to history. Now, it is necessary to make good for the deliberations missed at that time and limit the damage by more or less bearable compromises! With the negative implications for hydropower, the WFD is in clear conflict of objectives with the "EU Directive on the promotion of renewable energy sources" (Kyoto objectives)! Brussels is thus issuing contradictory regulations and the member states have to look for the square of the circle by the principle of subsidiarity.
Large and small hydropower are crestfallen about the WFD. It is true that small hydropower has fewer troubles with storage and the intensive influence of the regime of solids, but it has often the problem of NOT being a problem, and this again might be not so good in connection with the WFD.
No matter whether large or small, any restriction of power generation from hydropower a blow for the integral idea of environmental protection, since renewable energy is lost in favour of other, mainly not renewable energy sources. After all, the loss of one hydropower GWh amounts to 800 t of CO2!
The conflict potentials
Generally, the WFD provides for our waters "prohibition of deterioration" and an "obligation of improvement". Applied to the utilisation hydropower this leads to the following conflict areas:
- Impacts on the watercourse: storage/ discharge
- Impacts on the regime of solids (till, suspended matter): permanent retention in storage reservoirs/temporary, selective retention in tailback areas/discontinuous transport of solids in extraction lines
- Disruption of river continuum: at barrages/ weirs/in extraction lines
- Impacts on habitats: (flow speed, depths, turbulences)/at the river bed (erosion, sedimentation)/ at the banks (reinforcements) This should be enough! However, it shows that there are enough explosive issues to have controversies for years!
In this context, some less-informed could hold that until today hydropower has not been at all considerate of the environment and that it has to pay the price for its decade-long ignorance now. However, this is not the case! The power station operators have learned for quite some time and with very applicable methods to minimise and compensate the detrimental effects of technological necessities.
Among them are: fish bypasses, minimum discharge amounts, design of tailback regions and banks, and sediment transport. In many plants, these efforts led to ecological conditions, which are considered as modified, but acceptable. It is clear that many more have to follow.
What means heavily modified?
The hydropower station operator has to decide whether his plant has a severe detrimental impact on the water. This also influences the target status. The term "heavily modified" is often – publicly or individually – interpreted in a very negative way.
However, it only means that human activities substantially change individual parameters of water bodies and that these modifications are necessarily a result of the form of use. However, heavily modified does not mean that the water body is destroyed, devastated, and totally deprived of its natural characteristics!
The process of identification and designation is complex and takes place in several steps, the criteria are widely interpretable, and the insecurity of all concerned is obvious.
"Soft descriptions", which are typical for the European framework rules and regulations, are not very helpful. The meanwhile "famous" biology-based concepts "good ecological status" and "good ecological potential" therefore have to be transformed into applicable formulations in consideration of the impacts of hydropower.
However, if one knows in particular the incredible diversity of small hydropower plants, there can be no generalised classification of water stretches influenced by hydropower plants.
Therefore, individual designations and identifications in connection with the drawing up of water management plans will be indispensable.
Small hydropower is deeply concerned about the potential consequences of a "good" classification, although there is a general conviction that small hydropower has actually no severely detrimental impacts on water habitats.
In the case of the creation of a "good ecological status", however, it fears the worst. Thus, small hydropower is pushed into the schizophrenic position to seek a "heavily modified" status and not to seek it at the same time.
The uncertainty with regard to both the classification criteria and the consequences should therefore be smoothed out as soon as possible, if small hydropower is to become the cooperative partner it basically wants to be! (Source: aqua press Int. 4/2003, Prof. Dr. Bernhard Pelikan)
Contact & Information:
Universität für Bodenkultur Wien
a.o. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Bernhard Pelikan
Tel.: +43/676/33 100 37
