Odense
Fyn County Council
PRB
J.nr. 9-21-01.00-1-2001
Status note for Odense Pilot River Basin as of 1st of April, 2003
Fyn County Council has chosen to carry out the Odense Pilot River Basin Project in the form of
real-life testing to the greatest possible extent in order to ease the coming Article 5 reporting to the
EC in 2004 and the River Basin Management Plan in 2008. Via the Odense Pilot River Basin
Project, a Pilot River Basin Management Plan for Odense Fjord and its catchment will be prepared.
The pilot project's first phase comprises the preparation of a preliminary report that meets the
requirements in the WFD's Article 5, to be presented to the EC by 1 October 2003. Comments to
the Guidance Documents 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.6, and 2.8 will be included as a part of this report. A
report on testing of the remainder of the guidelines (2.5, 2.7, 2.9, 3.1) will be prepared and
presented to the EC before 1 July 2004.
The budget for the project, related projects etc. is presented in the Draft Summary of PRB meeting
in Brussels of 28 February 2003 (version from 25 March 2003).
The status of results for the project achieved to date is described below.
1. Reporting
The structure of the planned Article 5 working report will follow the framework that, in Denmark,
is nationally intended to be used for the coming Article 5 reports (Table of contents is enclosed,
Annex 1).
Draft chapters have been prepared for those parts of the report that give a general characterisation of
the Odense PRB catchment, namely topography, land use, and impacts, and characterisation
(including type classification and assessment of HMWB status) for watercourses, lakes, wetlands,
and coastal waters, and for groundwater conditions in the catchment.
A collated draft report will be available in Danish by 1 September and in English by 1 October
2003.
2. Guidance Document comments
To date, attention has been primarily given to commenting on GD 2.1 (Pressures and Impacts,
IMPRES) and GD 2.2 (HMWB), and, in part, to the horizontal GD 'Identification of Water Bodies'.
Preliminary comments are enclosed (Annex 2).
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3. Public participation
To ensure the broadest possible public involvement in the project, the following initiatives have
been taken:
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Establishment of a homepage for the project (scheduled to be on-line 1 may 2003).
Appointment of a regional/political advisory board for the project, in which municipal
authorities and interested groups, such as the agricultural organisations, The Danish Society
for Conservation of Nature, and many others with an interest in the project are represented.
This group will meet on 25 April 2003.
Appointment of a national/technical advisory board for the project, in which the national
authorities, research institutions, and consultancy firms with interests in implementation of
the Water Framework Directive in Denmark are represented. This group will meet 6 May
2003.
Integration with the Regional Plan procedure. In Denmark, county authorities attend to
regional planning, which includes establishment of quality objectives for water bodies. The
Regional Plan is revised every 4 years according to set guidelines, with a public, written
hearing, and the holding of public meetings, the next time in autumn 2003. Thus, this
planning procedure is closely related to future requirements for planning presupposed in the
Water Framework Directive. At the hearing rounds of the forthcoming Regional Plan, the
Odense PRB will, therefore, be included as a part of the hearings.´
4. Timetable
There are no changes to the general timetable submitted previously (sheet of milestones in the
project is enclosed, Annex 3).
5. Problems encountered and information gaps
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As cross-sectional accession to human resources is prerequisite for the Odense PRB Project,
it has demanded considerable resources to build up the appropriate project organisation and
to coordinate work across the specific technical sectors (an organisation diagram is
enclosed, Annex 4).
For a number of areas the necessary data foundation for completing type classification and
division of water bodies after the GD's guidance notes is insufficient or it has required
considerable resources to obtain the necessary data. This is the case for the smallest streams
(those managed by municipal authorities or private landowners), and for most small lakes
and ponds, and for wetlands in general in the Odense River Basin.
Inclusion of the general public and interested collaborative parties requires considerable
resources, despite the fact that the County's personnel can draw on experience from the wellestablished regional planning process.
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