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(52-34) Developing Tools for Environmental Management in Small Rural Municipalities Based on ERA Protocols. Carbonell, Gregoria1, Fernández, Carlos1, Alonso, Carmen1, Babín, María del Mar1, Ortiz, José1, Tarazona, José*,1, 1 Laboratory for Ecotoxicology, Madrid, Spain ABSTRACT- Municipalities play a key role in environmental management. They are expected to cover at least a first tier in the regulation of activities within their area. However, resources for technical assistance and data interpretation in small villages are limited or even negligible. Regulators are therefore limited when taking decisions. They require low cost tools, easy to conduct and easy to interpret. Environmental Risk Assessment protocols are considered the best available method for decision making in the chemicals area, and its utility can be extrapolated to other management decisions. This paper presents the initial results of a research project aiming the development of cost/effective decision-making tools for rural municipalities with less than 5000 inhabitants. Direct toxicity assessment for quantifying effects and system dynamic models for assessing exposure, are combined in ad-hoc ERA protocols. Acceptability criteria were selected from the current EU criteria. The activities covered by this initial phase are emissions to the municipal waste-water treatment, the final effluent from the municipal plant, management of animal residues (particularly pig manure), use of pesticides by local farmers, and the agro-food industries. Two models initially developed for the risk assessment of pig manure, EGPE-Visual and EGPE-Pro, have been expanded to cover other activities. The results of the pilot study conducted in a Spanish rural village are presented. Funded by the research project RTA01-045 Key words: Environmental management, System dinamic models, Rural municipalities |
