Part A

Member States will identify significant and sustained upward trends in all bodies or groups of bodies of groundwater that are characterised as being at risk in accordance with Annex II to Directive 2000/60/EC, taking into account the following requirements: in accordance with Section 2.4 of Annex V to Directive 2000/60/EC, the monitoring programme will be so designed as to detect significant and sustained upward trends in concentrations of the pollutants identified pursuant to Article 3 of this Directive; the procedure for the identification of significant and sustained upward trends will be based on the following elements: monitoring frequencies and monitoring locations will be selected such as are sufficient to: provide the information necessary to ensure that such upward trends can be distinguished from natural variation with an adequate level of confidence and precision; enable such upward trends to be identified in sufficient time to allow measures to be implemented in order to prevent, or at least mitigate as far as practicable, environmentally significant detrimental changes in groundwater quality. This identification will be carried out for the first time by 2009, if possible, and will take into account existing data, in the context of the report on trend identification within the first river basin management plan referred to in Article 13 of Directive 2000/60/EC, and at least every six years thereafter; take into account the physical and chemical temporal characteristics of the body of groundwater, including groundwater flow conditions and recharge rates and percolation time through soil or subsoil; the methods of monitoring and analysis used will conform to international quality control principles, including, if relevant, CEN or national standardised methods, to ensure equivalent scientific quality and comparability of the data provided; the assessment will be based on a statistical method, such as regression analysis, for trend analysis in time series of individual monitoring points; in order to avoid bias in trend identification, all measurements below the quantification limit will be set to half of the value of the highest quantification limit occurring in time series, except for total pesticides; the identification of significant and sustained upward trends in the concentrations of substances which occur both naturally and as a result of human activities will consider the baseline levels and, where such data are available, the data collected before the start of the monitoring programme in order to report on trend identification within the first river basin management plan referred to in Article 13 of Directive 2000/60/EC.

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Source: EUR-Lex (Cellar) · retrieved 2026-10-28 · Text as adopted (Official Journal); later amendments are not incorporated in this text.