PRZEGLĄD METOD STOSOWANYCH PRZY SPORZĄDZANIU PROGNOZ ODDZIAŁYWANIA NA ŚRODOWISKO DO PROJEKTÓW ROZPORZĄDZEŃ W SPRAWIE USTALENIA WARUNKÓW KORZYSTANIA Z WÓD REGIONÓW WODNYCH

In Polish legislation, Article 113 of the Water Law Act of 18 July 2001 (Journal of Laws of 2012 item 145, as amended) specifies certain planning documents, which must be made for the purposes of water management planning. One of the planning stages leading to improvement or preservation of good environmental status of water in the individual river basins, is to determinate water use conditions in water regions. There are 21 water regions in Poland, for each one of them, territorially competent Director of the Regional Water Management Authority compiled the project of water use conditions in water regions. Currently, the conditions are being adopted in the form of local law. Pursuant to Article 46 of the Act of 3 October 2008 On the Provision of Information on the Environment and its Protection, Public Participation in Environmental Protection and Environmental Impact Assessment (Journal of Laws of 2013 item 1235, as amended), projects of policies, strategies, plans or programs relating to, inter alia water management, developed or adopted by the authorities, defining the framework for the subsequent implementation of projects that may significantly affect the environment and/or cause a significant impact on a Natura 2000 area, requires strategic environmental assessment. The aim of this study was to determine what methods of assessment are used for the strategic environmental assessment, and what is the range of usage of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in strategic environmental assessment of projects of regulations on determining the conditions for use of water in water regions in Poland. Based on the analysis it can be concluded that in most of the analyzed documents, the assessment criteria are not explicitly defined and not applying quantitative methods of forecasting the impact on the environment makes it impossible to compare the nature and primarily the scale of the impact on the individual components of the environment.Wider use of Geographic Information Systems in strategic environmental assessment is recommended, not only for data visualization but mainly for the use of tools helping to conduct spatial analysis and decision making. The results confirm that methods currently used in strategic environmental assessment are not sufficiently rewarding and provide technical and methodological challenge for experts working on their development. Solving the problem requires the development of more innovative and effective methods of evaluation.