WATER MONITORING IN UKRAINE: METHODS FOR ASSESSING WATER QUALITY FOR VARIOUS PURPOSES IN CONNECTION WITH CHANGES IN THE REGULATORY FRAMEWORK (2014-2021)
Authors: Khilchevskyi V.K. 
Published: November 2021

Over the past five years (2014-2021), there have been significant changes in regulatory methods for assessing water quality for various purposes, which is due to Ukraine’s course towards European integration. An important feature was the cancellation of the acts of sanitary legislation of the Ukrainian SSR and the USSR (from 01.01.2017), which were applied in Ukraine for a long time (order of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine of 2016). The Law of Ukraine “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of Ukraine Concerning the Implementation of Integrated Approaches in Water Resources Management Based on the Basin Principle” (2016) amended the Water Code of Ukraine regarding hydrographic zoning and water monitoring in accordance with the provisions of the EU Water Framework Directive. In 2018, by a resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, the “Procedure for the implementation of state monitoring of waters” was approved. In 2019, the Ministry of Natural Resources of Ukraine approved the normative “Methodology for assigning a surface water array to one of the classes of the ecological and chemical states of a surface water array, as well as assigning an artificial or significantly altered surface water array to one of the classes of the ecological potential of an artificial or significantly altered surface water array”
The objects of state monitoring of waters are land and ground water bodies and sea waters. Surface water body – a specially defined surface water body or part of it. The body of surface waters can be classified into one of five categories: 1) rivers; 2) lakes; 3) transitional waters; 4) coastal waters; 5) artificial or substantially altered surface water bodies. The program of state monitoring of waters provides for control over four groups of indicators: 1) biological; 2) physical and chemical; 3) chemical; 4) hydromorphological. Based on the data and information obtained as a result of the state monitoring of the waters of surface and groundwater bodies, the ecological and chemical state of the surface water bodies, the ecological potential of artificial or significantly altered surface water bodies, the quantitative and chemical state of the groundwater bodies are determined, taking into account which river basin management plans and assess the level of achievement of environmental objectives.
The purpose of this study is to highlight the approaches that have developed at the present stage to the regulation of water quality for various purposes, the main of which are: environmental; hygienic (household and drinking and cultural and household or recreational water use), fishery. If, when assessing the quality of water for environmental purposes, a deviation from the maximum permissible concentrations (MPC) was made, then in other areas of water use, the MPC standards remain relevant. The importance of this study also lies in the need to convey generalized information to a wide range of authors who are interested in water quality issues.