JUDr. RNDr. Jaroslav Chyba, DrSc.

Okresní úřad Blansko, Czech Republic

 

Some considerations on the water law

 

            Water is not a commercial product like any other, but, rather, a heritage which must be protected, defended and treated as such. /1/.

 

            This introduction to the framework for Community action in the field of water policy  characterizes the importance of water in the history of the human civilization.  The development of the ancient Empires had been closely related to the water resources. Water is necessary for any form of life but it can be a cause of disasters as well. This ambivalent character of water implies severe legal regulation of water management. Provisions containing the water mangement had been contained in Hammurabi´s laws /2/ as well as in the ancient Roman law /3/ and Saxon law /4/.

 

            Compared with previous historical periods, modern environmental legislation emphasizes not only quantitative distribution of water, but also the protection of its quality.  Thus the water law must contain three main chapters:

- use of water,

- protection of water,

- protection against water.

 

            The water law could not be efficient without imposing  many duties and restrictions to the individuals. From the philosophical point of wiev, obligations imposed on the individual are justified only if they

- reach the desired purpose,

- and, at the same time, they are minimized in scope.

 

            In the present paper, the problem of wastewater treatment is analysed, starting from empirical data measured at three observational points in the Czech Republic.  The quality of the water in streams receiving the sewage of settlements was measured before and after having built the clearing stations.

 

            Sewage may be characterized by many parameters, the most important of which are BOD5 (biological oxygen demand in five days), COD (chemical oxygen demand measured by the Cr method), temperature t, DO (dissolved oxygen measured in situ), SP (solid particles), P (phosphorus), NH4 (nitrogen in ammonium ions) and NO3 (nitrogen in nitrate ions),  all of them (excepting temperature) measured in mg/l.

 

1st example: Jedovnice

 

            Situated some 20 km NE from the city of Brno, the village of Jedovnice has slightly more than 2500 inhabitants, who were sewing their wastewater partially in the Earth and partially to the receiving stream, which has a flow rate of about 30 l/s. The chemical parameters of the stream were measured in May 1988 before starting the operation of the cleaning plant, and one year later, in May 1999, when the cleaning plant had been receiving the sewage from about 70% of the settlement:

                                                 

            Chemical analysis had been performed together with biological  (especially algological) observations, whose results can be summarized only very briefly: the character of algae changed significantly.  Before the operation of the cleaning plant, the indicators of massive pollution prevailed, such as green flagellata. They have disappeared since the cleaning plant had started to operate  and, on the contrary, red algae have appeared indicating very clean water.

 

            Obviously, all parameters have significantly improved excepting the nitrate ions which depend on agricultural pollution and thus are not essentially influenced by the clarification process.

 

2nd example: Šebetov

 

            Situated some 60 km N of Brno, the village of  Šebetov has some 1100 inhabitants and its receiving stream has a flow rate of about 10 l/s.  The cleaning plant has been operating since autumn 2000, receiving the sewage from 50% of inhabitants.  The measurements had been performed  in May, 2000 and in May, 2001:

 

                

            Obviously, the quality of the receiving stream has been improved, but the content of pollutants is still very high, taking into account that the legal limit for BOD5 in streams is 8 mg/l, phosphorus 0.4 mg/l, nitrogen (as ammonium ions) 2.5 etc.

 

3rd example: Černá Hora-Bořitov

 

            Two villages with 3200 inhabitants together, 20 km N of Brno, Černá Hora and Bořitov are sewing their wastewater into the stream Býkovka with a steady flow of 100 l/s. 70 % of inhabitants are connected to the cleaning plant, operating since autumn 2000. The analyses had been performed in May 2000 and in May 2001. In this case, the cleaning plant is relatively far away from the village, and that is why two sets of data are presented, the first one corresponding to the samples taken just below the village and the second one corresponding to the samples taken at the outlet of the cleaning plant:

 

      

            The influence of clarification of the wastewater is hardly observed in this case. The content of dissolved oxygen increased to a value which cannot be explained by physical processes. It is obviously the secondary oxygen produced by the riverine flora. Strange enough, the oxygen demand increased, but this change does not exceed the changes normally occuring in flows in an agricultural landscape. In this case, the self-cleaning of the flow is obviously so strong, that the sewage clarification does not change essentially the quality of water. It should be noted, that even before the construction of the cleaning plant, the quality of water corresponded to the limits established by law for surface waters, as mentioned above.

 

            This example is interesting by the fact that it is the only one where the clarification is compulsory from the point of view of the EU legislation, which requires the cleaning plants to be built in each settlement with more than 2000 inhabitants. Of course, this result must not be generalized, but the question arises, whether the number of inhabitants is the best criterion to determine whether the cleaning plant must be built or not.

 

            In the former two cases, the effect of clarification was beyond dispute. It is clear that the positive effect is proportional to the percentage of inhabitants sewing their wastewater to the flow via the cleaning plant. There is , however, a legal (and perhaps even moral) problem: the owner of a house is entitled to use his dwelling in accordance with the steady state. In many cases, there is also an economic problem: who should pay the connecting pipelines.

 

            Some types of pollution are not caused by communal sewage, but rather by agriculture (this is the case of the nitrate pollution in the first example). In those cases, it would be presumably more efficient  to apply other measures to improve the water quality, such as the limitation of agricultural production. But such measures would raise the question of compensation for the lost profit.

 

            If  the maximum cleaning effect is aimed at  constant costs, then all natural conditions must be taken into account and the state administration must dispose of much freedom to consider where the cleaning plants ought to be built. This raises a question of equal rights: some settlements and even industrial factories would be disabled by the mere fact of being situated at a small creek, while others, situated at a large river with a mighty self-cleaning potential, would take economic profit of not cleaning their sewage.  For the sake of justice, it would be necessary to establish a fund to which every polluter would contribute according to the amount of the discharged pollution. The fund would cover the costs of building the cleaning stations and even of operating them. This is, however, hardly possible in a system of private economy, since all of the water management would have to be controlled by the state. As a conclusion: the water law in force is far from being effective. There is no possibility to minimize costs at the maximum environmental effect. On the other hand, the advantage of the given system is the immediate responsability of the polluter for his discharge, which would not be possible in a centralized system.

 

 

References

/1/ Directive 2000/60/EC  of the  European Parliament  and of the  Council of  23 October 2000  establishing      

     a framework for Community Action in the field of Water policy.

/2/ Klíma, Josef: Zákony Assýrie a Chaldeje. NČSAV, Praha 1985

/3/ Bonfante, Pietro: Instituce římského práva. ČS a. s. Právník, Brno 1932

/4/ Mueller, Curt (ed.): Sachsen-Spiegel. Philipp Reclam, Leipzig