The European Commission recently released its Blueprint to Safeguard Europe's Water Resources, outlining proposals to ensure better implementation of the EU’s water policy objectives. Several initiatives recognise the benefits of river restoration to improve the ecological status of Europe’s waters.

The Blueprint includes proposals on natural water retention, ecological flows and water accounts, and encourages restoration measures in the River Basin Management Plans and Flood Risk Management Plans submitted by Member States.

View the Blueprint submission by RESTORE and partners: http://www.restorerivers.eu/Publications/tabid/2624/mod/11083/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/3297/Default.aspx

View the Blueprint: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/water/blueprint/index_en.htm

The European Environment Agency recently released its report European waters - assessment of status and pressures. The report found that water pollution and physical modifications are still affecting the ecology of many of Europe’s lakes, rivers, transitional water bodies and coastal waters. It concludes that these problems are likely to prevent the water bodies reaching ‘good’ status by 2015, the target set by the EU’s Water Framework Directive (WFD).

View the report: http://www.eea.europa.eu/highlights/more-than-half-of-eu

RESTORE attended an international symposium in Vienna in September.  The symposium gathered 300 participants to look at research and new solutions for our rivers. If you look at the proceedings you can see the discussions on large hydro power schemes around the world, like Mekong River.  The sturgeon can not migrate along the Danube and other fish struggle to move around our rivers.  At the event the work and cooperation in Austria between river managers and power companies is helping to solve some of these issues.  Discussion consisted of presentations about the benefits of river restoration, upstream and downstream fish migration, environmental flows, modeling and aquatic ecology.  New fish pass cases, combined with reproduction habitats, were presented in some presentations. Jukka Jormola from RESTORE gave a presentation on natural fish bypass channels and work that is being undertaken in Finland. Technical tours were organized to fish passes and a new side channel under construction on the Danube.

Proceedings: http://www.ise2012.boku.ac.at/

Radio 4’s ‘You & Yours’ programme visited the Flood Test Centre in Wallingford, Oxfordshire to discover more about the innovative products involved in flood protection. Listen to the show on Friday 12.20pm: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qps9