Happy he, who could understand the causes of things Virgil 70-19 BC Environmental Protection of the North Sea Edited by Ρ J NEWMAN and A R AGG Heinemann Professional Publishing Heinemann Professional Publishing Ltd Halley Court, Jordan Hill, Oxford OX2 8 EJ OXFORD LONDON MELBOURNE AUCKLAND First published 1988 © Water Research Centre 1988 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Environmental protection of the North Sea. 1. North Sea. Pollution. Control measures I. Newman, P.J. II. Agg, A.R. 628.1'688'16336 ISBN 0 434 91370 7 Photoset by Wilmaset, Birkenhead, Wirral Printed in Great Britain by Redwood Burn Ltd, Trowbridge Editors5 Preface This book is an account of an international technical conference on environmental protection of the North Sea held at the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in London from 24-27 March 1987. The conference was hosted by the Water Research Centre (WRc)—the principal organisation in the UK for research and development on all aspects of water technology and the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Drinking Water and Water Pollution Control. It attracted over 250 delegates from 14 countries, including each of the North Sea littoral states, Canada, and the United States. A list of delegates is given in Appendix A. WRc chose environmental protection of the North Sea as the theme for its main conference in 1987 in view of continuing political pressure for further measures to protect and improve the quality of the North Sea. A ministerial meeting on the North Sea held in Bremen in 1984 called for major reductions in the discharge of possible pollutants (including sewage sludge) from land-based sources and from ships. The Bremen Declaration also proposed that the North Sea should be given special area status under the 1973/1978 MARPOL Conventions. The West German government organised the meeting in response to the strong environmental concerns expressed in Germany and the ministers agreed to review the situation at a second meeting in the UK in November 1987. In August 1985 the European Commission published a revised proposal for a Council Directive on dumping of wastes at sea. This proposal replaces an earlier draft (1976) and will, if adopted, have considerable impact on waste disposal operations in most Member States. It calls for severe restrictions on the incineration of wastes at sea, and the amount of many wastes dumped to be reduced by 10% each year for the five years 1990-1995. The environmental group Greenpeace has played a significant part in xi ν Editors' Preface generating concern about the apparent extent of pollution of the North Sea. This has been achieved by several media-seeking campaigns, including, for example, preventing the dumping into the North Sea of wastes from the German titanium dioxide industry. Recent attention has been concentrated on the UK which Greenpeace says is 'responsible for 75% of all industrial waste and 99% of all sewage and sludge dumped in the North Sea'. It has organised monitoring programmes covering not only the North Sea itself but also several UK estuaries (Thames, Humber, and Mersey) using the survey ship 'Beluga'. One Greenpeace newsletter included the claim that 'The North Sea is a vast open sewer. It's poisoned. It's diseased . . . and it kills'. Such emotive statements and reports of the campaigns have raised public concern over the state of the North Sea and strengthened demands from environmentalists for remedial action. The objectives of the WRc conference were to produce, as far as present knowledge allows, a definitive appraisal of the impact of potential pollutants on the North Sea and to provide the opportunity for informed discussions between researchers, industrialists, environmenta- lists, and representatives of the regulatory authorities. The timing of the conference was arranged so that the main conclusions could be made available to those responsible for preparing the water quality status report for the second Ministerial meeting to be held in London in November of 1987. The layout of the book follows the structure of the programme with Parts devoted to the principal groups of potential pollutants as well as methods of environmental prediction and control. The format of the programme was the subject of considerable consultation with individual experts and organisations in Europe and North America. It was con- sidered essential that the latest scientific evidence should be clearly presented in order to ensure a balanced discussion which would be representative of the various countries and interest groups attending the conference. The WRc planned to achieve this by selecting the speakers and commissioning each of the main papers. The chairmen of the sessions were also invited as experts in the topic of their respective sessions. Edited summaries of the discussions are included in each chapter. The conference was one of the first events of the European Year of the Environment (EYE) and therefore it was fitting that Sir Peter Harrop, KCB, Chairman of the UK EYE Committee, gave the opening address. Edited highlights of his remarks are given in the Introduction, together with those of Mr C Ρ Srivastava, Secretary General of the International Maritime Organization, who described the role of his organisation. The Summing-up by Dr M Bewers (Bedford Institute of Oceanography) and a listing of principal points arising from the Conference, are also included. Details of the five Support Papers and 14 Poster Papers presented, together with a summary of the main remarks made during the discussion 9 Editors Preface xv of the Poster Papers (an interesting innovation at the conference) are given in Appendices Β and C, respectively. The book should be of interest to a wide readership, not only from the North Sea littoral states but also from countries throughout the world, concerned about protection of the marine environment. The contents will be relevant to legislators, industrialists, research and environmental protection authorities, and environmental pressure groups. The Water Research Centre acknowledges the contribution made by the authors, the chairmen of the sessions, and the many other people who worked hard to make the conference a success. Thanks are also due to Dr Martin Holdgate, CB, Government Chief Scientist and Deputy Secretary Environmental Protection of the Department of the Environment, who presented a stimulating speech after the conference dinner. Acknowledgement is also made to the European Commission for sponsoring 13 delegates to attend, and to UK EYE who were joint hosts at the Welcome Reception. The organisation of the conference and subsequent preparation of this book has been a demanding though rewarding time for us and one that could not have been completed without the support of all colleagues and particularly the meticulous care taken by Mary Kennedy-Ping who carried out much of the editing. To all these people we offer our profound thanks. Ρ J Newman and A R Agg Medmenham October 1987 Introduction Β V Henderson, CBE Chairman, Water Research Centre Introduction to the Conference Β V HENDERSON, C BE I am very pleased to welcome you to the International Conference on Environmental Protection of the North Sea. Many of you will know WRc and that we have three main laboratories at which we carry out our research programme for the water industry in this country. We have one at Swindon, where we investigate engineering matters, at Medmenham in Buckinghamshire which deals with the environment, and at Stevenage where we research into processes. What you may not know is that we also have an overseas subsidiary in Philadelphia in the USA, WRc inc, which is taking British water services and expertise into the North American market. Today, wherever we go in the world, we are aware of a rapidly growing public interest in environmental matters. Whether it stems from a professional involvement like yours or is simply an individual statement about the quality of life, it has gathered a momentum which a few years ago would have seemed inconceivable. A measure of its new importance and strength can be drawn from the fact that politics, whatever their colour, are now universally becoming tinged with green. Here in Europe one of the environmental issues which is arousing considerable interest and discussion is the physical state of the North Sea. As well as being Chairman of WRc, I am also Chairman of one of the larger regional water authorities in the United Kingdom, Anglian Water, which has 500 kilometres of coastline fronting the North Sea. We have a sort of love-hate relationship with the North Sea. We hate it because it attacks our sea defences and our sea walls and threatens to flood large areas of our region which are below sea level. We love it because it provides productive fishing grounds adjacent to our shores which bring employment to ports in our area. We are thankful for it because it also enables us to dispose of some of our sewage either through sea outfalls or by sea dispersal from tankers. Therefore, our attitude towards it can be regarded as rather parochial and I suspect that this tends to be true of many of the areas throughout Europe whose boundary is on the North Sea. For this reason a conference like this is doubly important. It not only xx Introduction serves to focus international attention on the future of a major physical resource, but it helps to widen the horizons of those of us whose inclination is to look at the North Sea as a matter of local convenience or inconvenience. The Water Research Centre hopes this conference will help to define the true extent of the problems facing the North Sea and begin to identify their realistic solution, and I stress the words 'true extent' and 'realistic solution' because I feel there is always a danger in such a forum as this for the pursuit of the theoretical to prove more interesting than pragmatic discussion. We shall see. I also think it is important to bear in mind the true cost of what we may propose to do. We are truly delighted by the response to this conference because the Water Research Centre has long believed that it was important to host such a gathering, to review the many aspects of marine protection, and the practical measures necessary to take care of the North Sea. In developing the programme we wanted to be certain that it was truly international, with leading spokesmen and leading spokeswomen from all over the world. We wanted to be sure that all countries bordering on or deeply interested in the North Sea were invited and we wanted to be certain that the references to the many interests and viewpoints were balanced. I am sure we have all the ingredients for a very good meeting and over the next four days there is much fascinating ground, or perhaps I should say sea, to be covered. The conference is structured carefully to provide original discussion. May I also say how privileged we are to be able to use these excellent facilities of the International Maritime Organization here in London and how delighted we are that their Secretary-General will be talking to us a little later today. I suppose I need hardly tell you that this is the European Year of the Environment. Today the Year is officially three days old and so our European Conference on the North Sea is one of the first events in this European Year of the Environment. The EYE initiative was stimulated by the European Commission and we are grateful to them for sponsoring an additional 13 delegates from Member States. Please may I turn now to our next speaker, Sir Peter Harrop, who will be known to many of you after a very distinguished career which culminated at the top of the Department of the Environment. Sir Peter Harrop is Chairman of the United Kingdom's European Year of the Environment Committee. The Water Research Centre has received great support from this Committee, and as you may know incidentally, they were joint hosts with us yesterday for the evening's conference reception. Sir Peter will be followed by Mr Srivastava, the Secretary General of IMO, who will outline for us the work of his Organization. The European Year of the Environment SIR PETER HARROP, KCB (Edited highlights of his address) The health of the North Sea must be a matter of profound interest to all those countries who border on it. It has always been an important source of food through its fish stocks, more recently it's become a source of oil, natural gas, and at a rather more mundane level, perhaps, sand and gravel. It carries the trade of many nations and significantly for this conference the North Sea is the depository of innumerable wastes from numerous countries in Europe. The North Sea and its coasts and beaches is also the playground of millions of people and it is the home and breeding ground for a vast range of mammals, birds, fish, crustaceans and lower organisms. Concern about its condition was partly instrumental in the 1970s for setting up the Oslo Commission to control dumping at sea and the Paris Commission to control discharges to the sea from land. More recently, fears about the state of the North Sea prompted the Federal Republic of Germany to hold the first conference on the North Sea in Bremen in 1984 and I was privileged to attend that conference and its forerunner at Wilhelmshaven. There seemed justification for the fears about the North Sea so far as the Waddenzee was concerned and there seemed to be some parts of the Kattegat and some estuaries in Britain and the continent of Europe which have high local concentrations of contaminants resulting from high levels of waste inputs. Important recommendations were adopted at the Bremen conference and it was agreed that environment Ministers of the eight nations should meet again in two or three years' time, once more to discuss the state of the North Sea and the effectiveness of the measures which were being taken for its protection. In the event, the second Ministerial Conference on the North Sea, this November, is taking place during European Year of the Environment and that is especially appro- priate.