Existing sediment management guidelines: an overview

At the inaugural conference of SedNet WG 4 in April 2002 in Venice it was decided that a survey of existing sediment management guidelines was an important pre-requisite to elaborate on the opportunities for river basin planning of sediment management. This article discusses the existing programmes, decision support system, and conventions and concludes that there is presently no comprehensive river basin sediment management guideline at an international (European) or national level. Management guidelines which are of high relevance for sediment management exist mostly for the purpose of environmentally sound handling for navigation. For the maintenance of waterways and harbours sediments have to be handled in an environmentally sound and economical way. There are some special international and national regulations for dredged material which have different legal and technical backgrounds, purposes and limited competence. The way to find the appropriate regulation within legislation is to ask the question: What will happen with the sediment/dredged material?