Amendments to the Water Law Act and certain other acts

The Council of Ministers in July this year adopted the draft act amending the Water Law Act and some other acts submitted by the Minister of Maritime Economy and Inland Navigation.

According to the government, the solutions proposed in it will, among others, speed up the issue of water law permits.

The most important planned changes include:

• proposals to modify the provisions on water ownership and the obligations of their owners (Article 219);
• proposed changes to the provisions on water law consents in relation to the ways of using waters requiring a water permit (repealing Article 34 points 9 and 16). This change means giving up the obligation to obtain water law permits to organize leisure or water sports as part of business activities.
• changes in the procedure for determining the catalog of pages of administrative proceedings in this type of cases (addition of Article 401 para. 5-9) and the required annexes to the application for determining the next period of validity of such authorization and the application for extension of the deadlines after which licenses expire by virtue of law ( addition of Article 414 (10);
• a proposal to delete some provisions regarding the statements of entities obliged to pay for water services, which were adopted on the basis of last year’s amendment to the Water Law (repealing Article 552 (2l-2n));
• the proposed extension of the deadlines for the adaptation of water law permits for water abstraction from December 31, 2019 to December 31, 2021 by specifying the actual maximum amounts of water abstracted in them (Article 562) and the development by PGW Waters of Poland of a methodology for determining the average low flow from for many years (Article 552 (6)).

In addition, the Act provides:

• Financing from the state budget the activities of state services: the State Hydrological and Meteorological Service, the State Hydrogeological Service and the State Service for the Safety of Damage Buildings. Currently, the operating costs of these services are covered by the Polish Water Economy (PGW WP).
• Change in provisions determining the content of the preliminary assessment of the state of the marine water environment (this change is necessary due to the need to implement the provisions of Directive 2017/845 / EU).
• Ownership rights of the Treasury in relation to inland waterways with special transport significance are to be exercised by the Polish Water Farm. This means the transfer of ownership from the minister for inland navigation to Polish Waters in relation to inland waterways with special transport significance.