The paper is devoted to the development of proposals concerning the improvement of surface water bodies and the appointment of target indicators of the natural waters’ quality. The paper considers a variety of problems of preserving, restoring and improving the quality of natural surface waters: from regional features of the formation of natural water composition, to differences in the requirements for the quality of water consumed. The object of the study is the qualitative indicators of the waters of natural water bodies, and the subject of the study is the methodological approaches to the normalization of these indicators. The purpose of the work is to identify the main shortcomings in the domestic system of rationing the quality of natural waters, and to form appropriate proposals. For this purpose, the following tasks were set and solved: to review the methodological approaches to assessing and rationing the quality of natural waters used in some foreign countries and in the Russian Federation, to identify the main causes and shortcomings; to make proposals for improving the current system of water quality rationing. The result of this work is the conclusions about the lack of impact of the strategy operating in Russia in the development of schemes of complex use and protection of water objects, standards of permissible impact on water bodies, the appointment of permissible discharge limits in terms of maintaining and improving the water quality of natural water bodies. The reasons that led to this are indicated. The necessity of taking into account, in addition to the physical and chemical composition, also hydrobiological parameters is shown. It is concluded that instead of fisheries management standards, environmental standards should serve as the basis for target indicators of water quality of natural water bodies, which determine the well-being of humans and the stable functioning of aquatic ecosystems, taking into account regional factors. Proposals were made to adjust the methodological approaches to the implementation of this strategy. According to the authors, these proposals will speed up the solution of the main objectives of the strategy – the ecological improvement of water bodies, the preservation of unique aquatic ecosystems and the environmentally safe development of territories that previously experienced relatively small anthropogenic impacts (Eastern Siberia and the Far East)
Optimization of load norms for transfrontier water bodies taking into account natural processes of self-purification