Denmark is home to water in some way or another. Over a million people live within a few kilometres of a fjord, or the open ocean.
Denmark’s water environment, however, is in serious trouble. Real trouble.
Miljstyrelsen says only five of 986 lakes, and five of 109 coast areas, are in good ecological condition.
The government is willing to invest 5.4 billion Kroner in new initiatives to improve the situation.
We must take care our water environment, or we will fail to achieve our goals. The water management plans are a keystone in our efforts towards improving the water environment. Lea Wermelin, environment minister, said
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These initiatives include:
– Analysing and improving the water quality in coastal waters using newly-developed ecosystem models that calculate nutrient numbers.
– New quality indexes have been developed to include bottom-dwelling algae (Phytobenthos) When evaluating the waterway conditions.
– Bottom-dwelling algae, benthic animals, visibility depth and oxygen saturation will be included in the condition assessments of lakes.
– Groundwater condition assessments will be measured using new methods.
– Greater knowledge has been gained about, among other things, land-based emission sources relating to environmentally-hazardous pollutants.
– Measures for reducing the discharge of nutrients to coastal waters and lakes have been updated, and new knowledge about the conversion of nitrogen from land to fjords has been included.
Learn more about the plans, which still require approval by Parliament, here (in Danish).