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Campaigners from Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) will be in Luxembourg on Monday 28 th June to deliver a ‘surfboard petition’ to EU Environment Ministers that calls for better protection for water users from EU laws.
Ministers will be in Luxembourg to discuss the modernisation of an EU Bathing Water Directive that is currently 27 years old.
PHOTOCALL: 9:30am at the front of the Foire Internationale de Luxembourg (FIL) Conference Centre, 5 rue Carlo Hemmer, Luxembourg City on Monday 28 th June 2004.
A delegation of SAS campaigners with surfboards and wearing wetsuits and gas masks will deliver a surfboard petition to EU Environment Ministers calling for better health protection for recreational water users under proposed new bathing water legislation. The surfboard is adorned with hundreds of photos of SAS supporters practising their chosen water sports all of whom want better health protection from pollution under the Directive. The photos were received after an internet appeal launched earlier in the month.
SAS has been campaigning for 15 years for a revision of the Bathing Water Directive to ensure everyone using water for bathing or recreation around Europe could be protected by clean and safe water. Already the European Parliament has endorsed SAS calls for tighter water quality standards to be met and a greater provision of real time information for the public about bathing waters. The Parliament also recognised that people engaged in recreational water sports where immersion is routine (surfing, windsurfing, bodyboarding, diving) should receive better health protection under new laws and not be discriminated against.
Those engaged in recreational water sports have long faced greater health risks from polluted water than traditional bathers. Scientists have shown that surfers are 3 times more likely to contract Hepatitis A than the general public and so to ignore their use of ‘bathing water’ in proposed bathing water legislation SAS believe would be discriminatory.
Whilst SAS believe legislation should provide information to all types of water users so they are able to make an informed choice for themselves, new legislation should define key areas for recreational water use and ensure those waters are safeguarded against polluted water.
Richard Hardy, SAS Campaigns Director says: “To not recognise recreational water users in new laws proposed for bathing water legislation would exclude millions of people from the to right to clean and safe water and would have to be deemed discrimination. SAS urges Environment Ministers to acknowledge and provide better health protection for all who use water, whether for recreation or bathing at Monday’s Environment Council meeting”.
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