# Directive 2006/118/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 December 2006 on the protection of groundwater against pollution and deterioration, Article 2: Definitions

Extent: E+W+S+N.I.

For the purposes of this Directive, the following definitions shall apply in addition to those laid down in Article 2 of Directive 2000/60/EC:
1)) ‘groundwater quality standard’ means an environmental quality standard expressed as the concentration of a particular pollutant, group of pollutants or indicator of pollution in groundwater, which should not be exceeded in order to protect human health and the environment;
2)) ‘threshold value’ means a groundwater quality standard set by Member States in accordance with Article 3;
3)) ‘significant and sustained upward trend’ means any statistically and environmentally significant increase of concentration of a pollutant, group of pollutants, or indicator of pollution in groundwater for which trend reversal is identified as being necessary in accordance with Article 5;
4)) ‘input of pollutants into groundwater’ means the direct or indirect introduction of pollutants into groundwater as a result of human activity;
5)) ‘background level’ means the concentration of a substance or the value of an indicator in a body of groundwater corresponding to no, or only very minor, anthropogenic alterations to undisturbed conditions;
6)) ‘baseline level’ means the average value measured at least during the reference years 2007 and 2008 on the basis of monitoring programmes implemented under Article 8 of Directive 2000/60/EC or, in the case of substances identified after these reference years, during the first period for which a representative period of monitoring data is available.

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Source: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eudr/2006/118/article/2 (the official version)
Page: https://openlegislation.uk/eu-directive-2006-118/article-2
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: legislation.gov.uk, The National Archives.