Legal Problems of Ensuring the Quality of Underground Drinking Water in Ukraine
Legal Problems of Ensuring the Quality of Underground Drinking Water in Ukraine

Summary/Abstract: The paper is devoted to the analysis of the state of legal protection of the quality of drinking groundwater in Ukraine and the current trends in the development of national legislation in this area, taking into account the Directives of the European Union, which regulate water relations in this field. Drinking water is one of the most important human needs, as evidenced by numerous scientific studies, including legal ones, which formulate scientific approaches to understanding the right to drinking water as one of the basic human rights and ensuring its safety. On the basis of many factors, the problems of the lack of drinking water of the appropriate quality are revealed, in connection with which the demand for fresh underground water is rapidly increasing, and as a result, the anthropogenic load on the underground hydrosphere and the risk of pollution and depletion of these waters are increasing. Therefore, the underground waters of Ukraine are gaining more and more importance, and the legal problems of their protection and ensuring their quality are urgent. The work consists of three parts, which analyze the legal principles of ensuring the quality of drinking groundwater of Ukraine, the concept of drinking groundwater as an object of legal relations for protection and use, as well as the peculiarities of legal protection of the safety and quality of drinking groundwater of Ukraine. Current issues of groundwater protection, problems of legislative regulation of state accounting, state monitoring and state control of the quality of drinking groundwater on the territory of Ukraine are considered. The main problems of legal assurance of the quality of drinking groundwater and the ways to solve them have been determined. Particular attention is paid to the improvement of drinking groundwater quality standards and their legislative enshrining. Proposals for improving the legal provision of drinking groundwater quality of Ukraine have been developed and substantiated, including taking into account the experience of the European Union. The article identifies the prospects for further scientific research in this area, in particular: determining the specifics of the legal regime for underground drinking water in Ukraine, studying the legal issues regarding implementation and protection of the right to drinking water (including underground water) of adequate quality, quantity and safety for human life and health and ensuring equal access to it at the national and international levels. The methodological basis of the study is a set of general philosophical, general scientific, special scientific and legal methods which allowed for a comprehensive analysis of the legal framework for the quality and protection of underground drinking water in Ukraine. The authors use descriptive and analytical methods of cognition as well as methods of legal norms interpretation. The problems of legal regulation are analyzed based on the study of international and national legal acts.

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