Vie, 02/04/2004
The European Commission has sent Sweden a final written warning for failing to clean urban waste water as it should under EU water protection law. By failing to take all the necessary measures to reduce the excessive presence of nutrients in wastewater, Sweden is contributing to the over-enrichment of the Baltic Sea. The Baltic Sea is adversely affected by excessive discharges of nitrogen. This nutrient promotes the undesirable proliferation of phytoplankton and harms the local marine ecology. The EU´s Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive requires that nitrogen be removed from urban wastewater discharges from towns and cities with populations of more than 10,000. The Commission considers that Sweden is not respecting this obligation for towns located to the North of Norrtälje and in the southern-central part of the country, and is not doing enough to protect water quality in the Baltic. Similar action is being taken against Finland.