Project is granted under Special Projects Competition on Environmental Education.

The implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive is lagging behind as stakeholders of various levels lack knowledge and information on the hazardous substances used in the processes, chemical products, and emissions of these substances to the water environment. There is no practical and easy understandable information about priority hazardous substances, their impact to environment and human health, how to identify these hazards, and what are potentials for substitution of these materials. Moreover, state authorities lack information about occurrence of priority hazardous substances on the market and their release to the environment. Therefore reporting required by WFD and Helcom Recommendation 19/5 becomes hardly possible. Implementing authorities lack knowledge about potential occurrence of the substances in the industry or plant protection products. Therefore it is difficult to ensure proper enforcement of legal requirements and relevant control. The grantee decided to reduce these shortcomings by the project.

The overall aim of the project is to improve water quality of the transboundary Lielupë-Mu?a river basin by reducing emission of priority hazardous substances to the environment. The project aims to increase level of awareness of stakeholders?, public and NGOs on certain internationally recognized priority hazardous substances used in agriculture and industrial processes, as well as to develop skills of professional users of chemicals, including industry and farmers, on identification and reduction/ prevention of discharges of hazardous substances to water bodies. Project aims to enhance transboundary cooperation between Lithuanian and Latvian stakeholders for better management of the Lielupë-Mu?a river basin on this basis as well.

The activities of the project will support implementation of WFD and HELCOM recommendation 19/5. The planed activities of the project are:
1. Training for industrial enterprises (SMEs)/ professional users of chemicals on identification of hazardous substances in their processes and products (including home work in between of 2 sessions). About 20 enterprises will be trained.
2. Information day for farmers on hazardous substances in plant protection products and how to avoid them. About 40-50 farmers will be involved.
3. Information publications on identification and substitution of hazardous substances for public/NGOs (500 pieces), industry/ professional users (200 pieces) and farmers (350 pieces) will be produced.
4. International workshop on hazardous substances for water environment will be held in Latvia.
5. Workshop for the Lielupë-Mu?a river basin stakeholders (including Latvian) on possible measures for reduction of hazardous substances emitted to water will be organized in Latvia.

The main partner of the project is Baltic Environmental Forum-Latvia. It carries out similar activities under Phare project in Latvia.