Environmental quality standards water bodies, VISS Water information systemsSweden

In water management, environmental quality standards are used to specify water quality requirements at a given point in time. The main rule is that all water bodies should achieve the standard good status or potential by 2015 and that the status should not deteriorate. If the status is worse than good in 2015, the year of achievement of the standard can be moved forward with a so-called exception. In addition, specific requirements may exist in certain types of protected areas. The status classification and how environmental quality standards are to be established are regulated in Chapters 3 and 4 of Ordinance (2004:660) on management of the quality of the aquatic environment and in the Swedish Geological Survey Regulation SGU-FS 2013:2 on environmental quality standards and status classification for groundwater and the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management’s HVMFS 2013:19 regulations on classification and environmental quality standards for surface water. This service contains the quality requirements as well as any time exceptions for each individual water body in Sweden. There is also the possibility of downloading the data.