Workshop on cost effectiveness analysis – current status in Austria Brussels, December 21, 2006

Morning session - Austria; State of the art on CEA 1 Starting Point: Good experience on CEA for individual projects based on detailled catalogue of measures (collected mostly by project consultants on individual basis ) Insuffisant experiences with regard to basin wide / sub basin approach Stage reached in developping methodology: contract entrusted to leading expert in economics first step (draft of methodology / parts of catalogue of measures based on German Handbook) finalised Some typical examples of measures from agriculture, industry, urban wastewater treatment have been included so far to illustrate way forward

Morning session - Austria; State of the art on CEA 2 Results of our first step: approach envisaged which covers sub basins in a rather detailled way – final result would include elaboration of a rather complex decision support modell catalogue of measures partly finalised; derived from individual projects; measures cover e.g. individual components of an entire waste water treatment plant (e.g. sand filter…but also different diameters of connecting sewers) incuding costs per unit next steps of contract stopped due to doubts of viability of approach (doubts, that level of detail envisaged is in balance with uncertainties; catalogue of measures considered to be too detailled for proper use at level of sub basins)

Morning session - Austria; State of the art on CEA 2 Next steps: looking for examples of CEA good practice covering sub basin scale alternative simplified approach envisaged for first RBM plan in order to avoid wrong allocation of funds and efforts (taking uncertainities better into account) finalisation of work on catalogue of measures to streamline catalogue of measure to needs resulting from river basin approach (do we really have to assess measures at sub basin level defined as individual components of waste water treatment plants ?) to include further measures foreseen to improve e.g. moderate status caused by morphological impacts

Session pm.- Austria; Key issues:Uncertainities + priority setting (1) Wide spread need for action due to morphological impacts (see Article 5 WFD Analysis, exceeding ressources available for first RBMplan) but Considerable uncertainities with regard to: assessment of status Results of Intercalibration based on few quality elements short row of monitoring results / lack of data effect of measures (e.g. rate of nutrient removal is well known for waste water treatment plants but much less well known for buffer strips as rate of removal may depend on crop, width, slope, soils…; Uncertainities may be extremely high for ecological measures – e.g. how many squaremeters of spawning grounds are necessary for good status?...) costs of measures (range of costs per unit of measures, sometimes only order of magnitude…)

Common understanding usefull on setting of priorities?: Session pm. - Austria; key issues: Uncertainities + Priority setting 2) Basic Assumptions: Each combination of measures will increase uncertainities further Wrong allocation of measures /efforts / costs have to be avoided (considerable concern, that measures taken in the first RBMplan based on very complex analysis may prove later wrong; as budgets are scarce at all levels this may endanger considerably acceptance of future measures) . Common understanding usefull on setting of priorities?: Should Priorities of first RBMplan be on those measures with low uncertainities / low risk of wrong allocation of efforts combined with a good cost / benefit ration per km of water body and which lead per se to good status ? May the realisation of complex combinations of measures (with risk of wrong allocations) be postponed from first RBMplan (of course in a transparent way) ? Or do we have to start with individual measures with low uncertainities even if this does not improve status?

Session pm. – Austria; key issues: Scale – catalogue of measures Catalogue of measures (on subbasin scale) derived from individual projects very detailled (Costs per unit of UWWtreatment plant e.g.per sandfilter, different diameters of sewers….) Is this really adequate for scale of sub basins ? Experiences of other MS? Actions which may result from monitoring: e.g. monitoring reveals whether concentrations are in line with quality objectives if not, exceeding concentrations / exceeding (e.g. nutrient)loads have to be reduced catalogue of measures and their costs should refer directly to those loads (e.g. cost per tonne of nitrogen) and not to individual components of a UWWT plant

Session pm. – Austria; key issues - Conclusions Particular interest in catalogues of measures tailormade to sub basin scale; appropriate examples on CIRCA are highly welcome (+ contact persons) approaches of CEA tailormade to sub basin scale and explicitely taking into account wide range of uncertainities; due to existing time pressure no sophisticated approaches; Appropriate examples are highly welcome Common understanding for priority setting: If needs to restore good status / good potential exceed available ressources all those measures should be put in place first, which have low uncertainities / lead per se to good status and have proportionate costs per (km of) waterbody