Plan to help improve water quality should be 'implemented without delay'

A plan to help drive water quality improvement across Northern Ireland’s rivers, lakes and coastal waters needs to be strengthened and implemented without delay, a report has said.The Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) said the failure to finalise a River Basin Management Plan in Northern Ireland “paints a very worrying picture”.In response, Environment Minister Andrew Muir said he took the findings of the OEP report “extremely seriously”.

As part of its role to monitor how environmental laws are working, the OEP carried out a review of the key legislation regarding water quality in the region – the Water Framework Directive (WFD) Northern Ireland (NI) Regulations – and how they are being implemented by the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (Daera) and the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA) through River Basin Management Planning.The WFD NI regulations require Daera to develop and roll out a River Basin Management Plan (RBMP) every six years.The RBMP was due by December 2021, but this draft plan has yet to be finalised to help drive water quality improvement.OEP chief executive Natalie Prosser said: “Our report finds that although the approach of the WFD NI regulations is broadly sound, it is not being implemented or delivering as it should for Northern Ireland’s lakes, rivers and coastal waters.“This paints a very worrying picture.”“Unfortunately, we don’t have far to go to see the serious consequences when water quality is neglected, as the ongoing crisis at Lough Neagh shows.”Noxious blooms of blue-green algae covered large parts of the lough last summer and also affected other waterways and beaches in the region.The algae has returned this summer.Ms Prosser added: “Our report identifies the urgent need for Daera to publish the latest RBMP and put it into action.“These plans are important because they set out the objectives and measures needed to protect and improve waters in Northern Ireland.”The OEP’s report also recommends that the draft RBMP should be strengthened by including specific environmental objectives for all individual water bodies, with a “tangible and detailed programme of measures” to meet these objectives in practice and the scale of funding needed to do so.The report said according to the latest data some things are getting worse rather than better with just 31% of surface water bodies in Northern Ireland in a good ecological condition. This is a fall of 1% from the corresponding figure of 32% in 2015.

Daera has set a working target to bring 70% of water bodies to ‘good status’ by 2027.However, the OEP said failure to implement the WFD NI regulations effectively means this target and others are now unlikely to be met, according to the OEP report.Ms Prosser said: “As things stand, we assess that the 2027 target is likely to be missed by a considerable margin.“We also assess that Northern Ireland is not on track to meet the environmental objectives in the WFD NI regulations.“This failure to meet the 2027 target will then have a detrimental knock-on effect on the Northern Ireland Executive’s other environmental aims, such as the ‘excellent water quality’ goal in the draft Environment Strategy and ‘thriving, resilient and connected nature and wildlife’ goal.”She added: “There needs to be stronger leadership from the Northern Ireland Executive in implementing the WFD NI regulations.“It must speed up and scale up its efforts to protect and improve its waters.”The OEP makes 16 recommendations to the Northern Ireland Executive, Northern Ireland Assembly and Daera, designed to increase the prospects of protecting and improving the water environment.Daera now has three months to lay its response to the report before the Northern Ireland Assembly.Mr Muir said: “We know that, in the past, we have not got the balance right when it comes to policy to protect water quality and we recognise that there is much more work to do.“Lough Neagh has been a wake-up call for water quality issues and this report is a timely reminder of the work required, not only across government, but the public and private sectors, including local government, and the wider community.“I am committed to taking action and meeting the challenge together with others.”He added: “I will consider the recommendations in the report and in due course my department will set out our position on each recommendation made in relation to Daera and the NIEA and the actions we are going to take which will be subject to Assembly scrutiny before it is laid in the Assembly. We will also provide annual reports on delivering those actions.“My officials and I will continue to make sure that our statutory and legislative requirements are given the highest priority.”

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