EU Surface Water Ecological Exemption Records — EEA WISE

Keyless. Pay per record. Every ecological-status exemption and its driving pressure, surface water body by surface water body.

This actor turns the European Environment Agency (EEA) WISE Water Framework Directive (WFD) database into clean, per-record data — the ecological-status exemption types and their associated pressures for Europe's surface water bodies. Each run reads the EEA's keyless DiscoData SQL service and delivers one row per exemption record, structured for environmental and water-management analysis, reusable with acknowledgement of the EEA, with no personal data of any kind.

What this is, in one paragraph

Under the Water Framework Directive, a member state may claim an exemption from achieving good ecological status or potential for a surface water body, citing a type and a driving pressure. This actor reads that table and delivers one record per exemption: the country, river basin district and sub-unit, the water body (code, name, category), the ecological status label, and the ecological exemption TYPE, TYPE GROUP, PRESSURE, and pressure group — all carried as filed. It is the surface-water ECOLOGICAL exemption layer, distinct from the priority-substance CHEMICAL exemption regime.

Who buys this and for what job

• Regulatory-intelligence teams tracking ecological exemptions and the pressures behind them
• River-restoration and hydromorphology teams targeting the pressures driving exemptions
• Environmental NGOs and researchers analysing exemption use across basins and cycles
• Data engineers who want the WISE WFD sw-ecological-exemption table as clean rows from a keyless source.

EEA licence — reuse with acknowledgement

One licence rider travels on every record. EEA data may be reused, including commercially, provided the source is acknowledged: "Source: European Environment Agency (EEA)." Where third-party content is marked, it keeps its own terms. These are reported values and status labels as filed — not a compliance verdict.

Water-body grain — no person data

The unit of every record is an ecological-status exemption for a surface water body — a water body and its reported attributes, never a person. WISE WFD reporting is at water-body / river-basin level: there is no contact, operator, or responsible-person field in the source table, and none is selected or emitted — the query reads only the water-body identity, the status labels, and the ecological exemption type and driving pressure. A person-key guard runs on every record as a backstop. The file_url, where present, points to the official EEA/Eionet reporting file (an organisation reporting system), never a person.

A required partition — this is a large dataset

The table holds 623,729 rows, so this actor requires a partition: every run must set a countryCode. The country bounds the run; there is no unbounded all-Europe pull. An optional year (reporting cycle) filter narrows further, and maxRecords is the hard ceiling.

A note on scale, honestly

The source table holds 623,729 rows as verified by an exact COUNT(*) at build time. It carries both the 2016 and 2022 Water Framework Directive reporting cycles (the reporting_year field distinguishes them). This is the real, populated table for this category; where an index figure elsewhere suggested a smaller number, the live count above is authoritative.

Pricing

Event	Free plan	Bronze	Silver	Gold / Platinum / Diamond
sw_ecological_exemption_record	$0.05	$0.045	$0.04	$0.0335

Delivered before charged. Blocked runs and empty results cost nothing.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
countryCode	string	—	countryCode is required — 2-letter country code (e.g. DE, FR).
year	integer	—	Optional WFD reporting cycle year to filter (e.g. 2016, 2022).
maxRecords	integer	500	Ceiling on records delivered and billed.

Output

One JSON object per exemption record. Real example (values as reported):

{
  "record_id": "FRSW001:Article 4(4):Hydromorphological:2022",
  "reporting_year": 2022,
  "country_code": "FR",
  "country_name": "France",
  "eu_rbd_code": "FR1000",
  "rbd_name": "SEINE",
  "eu_surface_water_body_code": "FRSW001",
  "surface_water_body_name": "Example River",
  "surface_water_body_category": "RW",
  "ecological_status_or_potential_value": "3",
  "ecological_exemption_type": "Article 4(4)",
  "ecological_exemption_pressure": "Hydromorphological",
  "source": "EEA WISE Water Framework Directive (WFD) \u2014 surface-water ecological-status exemptions",
  "observed_at": "2026-08-22T00:00:00Z"
}

An unbilled RUN_RECEIPT records the robots check, the filters, rows seen and delivered, and whether charged equals delivered.

Field reference

Each record is one ecological exemption. Identity: record_id, country_code, country_name, eu_rbd_code, rbd_name, eu_sub_unit_code, sub_unit_name, eu_surface_water_body_code, surface_water_body_name, surface_water_body_category, and reporting_year. Status: ecological_status_or_potential_value. Exemption: ecological_exemption_type, ecological_exemption_type_group, ecological_exemption_pressure, and ecological_exemption_pressure_group. Plus has_descriptive_data and file_url. Provenance travels on every record: source, source_url, licence, attribution, disclaimer, and observed_at.

How a run works

A run first re-reads the source host's robots posture from your runtime — the EEA DiscoData host — and stops at the door if that ever changes. It pages the WISE WFD sw-ecological-exemption table (filtered to your optional countryCode and year), and flattens each row to one record — carrying every status label and value verbatim, never anything person-shaped — delivered before it is charged, so a blocked or empty run costs you nothing. The actor stops at your maxRecords ceiling and records charge_equals_delivered in the receipt.

Coverage and scope

The table holds on the order of 623,729 rows across reporting countries, river basin districts, and the 2016 and 2022 WFD reporting cycles. Because each record carries the country_code, the water-body identity, and the reporting_year, segmenting by country, basin, or cycle is straightforward. Pull one country, or the whole table to seed a water-status warehouse.

Working with the data

The exemptions are a river-management signal, and the fields make them actionable. Because every record pairs an ecological_exemption_type with an ecological_exemption_pressure, an analyst can see which pressures (hydromorphology, diffuse pollution, abstraction) drive the most ecological exemptions in a basin in a single group-by, and the reporting_year tracks how exemption use shifted between cycles.

Cost guidance

One sw_ecological_exemption_record per delivered row: cost = rows delivered × your plan's per-record price. Scope with countryCode and year to keep runs bounded. 1,000 rows is $50 (Free) / $33.50 (Gold).

Honest limitations

• As reported. Status labels and values are as filed by member states for the WFD reporting cycle; this actor reformats, it does not audit or recompute.
• A status label, not a verdict. These are reported classifications and exemptions, not an independent compliance assessment.
• Two cycles merged. The table carries both the 2016 and 2022 reporting cycles; the reporting_year field distinguishes them — filter on it if you want a single cycle.
• Acknowledge the EEA. The acknowledgement travels on every record.
• No person data of any kind.

Differentiation

This is a net-new category for the NexGenData fleet. It is distinct from eu-surface-water-chemical-exemption-records — this cell is the ECOLOGICAL-status exemption regime (quality elements and their pressures), while that cell is the priority-substance CHEMICAL exemption regime; the two are separate WFD exemption tracks. It differs entirely from the Nitrates, Bathing Water, and Urban Waste Water directive cells. Its specific job is the WFD surface-water ecological-status exemptions and pressures.

The NexGen Signal family

Part of the NexGen Signal family of pay-per-record data products:

• EU Waterbody Quality Records — EEA
• EU Bathing Water Quality Records — EEA
• EU Nitrate Monitoring Records — EEA
• EU Wastewater Compliance Records — EEA UWWTD
• EU Pesticide Water Monitoring Records — EEA

Source: European Environment Agency (EEA), WISE Water Framework Directive (WFD) database (discodata.eea.europa.eu). EEA data may be reused, including commercially, provided the source is acknowledged: "Source: European Environment Agency (EEA)"; marked third-party content keeps its own terms. Water-body grain; no contact, operator, or responsible-person field is selected or emitted, no natural-person data of any kind. Status labels and values as filed for the WFD reporting cycle, not a compliance verdict.