On Tuesday, 5 June 2018, the President of the Czech Republic signed an amendment to the Water Act. Amendment No. 113/2018 was promulgated on 11 June, comprehensively changing the existing fee administration system. The fee for groundwater offtake and the fee for releasing waste water to surface water will newly be administered by the State Environmental Fund instead of the Czech Environmental Inspectorate.
Besides other areas, such as the transposition of EU legislation or additional measures relating to the protection against flood emergencies and danger, the amendment also revises the definition of the term “waste water” and the related waste water legislation, namely in relation to releasing waste water from overflow chambers, which protect sewers in a single sewage system against hydraulic overload, to surface water.
However, the amendment, of which the majority is set to become effective on 1 January 2019, does not in any way address the issue of dynamic climate changes, which have been manifesting themselves in the Czech Republic by long periods of drought in recent years. Therefore, another amendment to the Water Act is in the pipeline, whose aim will be to accelerate the preparation of necessary measures and projects to combat the shortage of surface water, namely the construction and interconnection of remote waterworks systems or the development of new water reservoirs.
The article is part of dReport – July 2018, Legal news.
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