the log blog

UK Rivers Fail New EU Standard

The Environment Agency has reported that three quarters of the rivers in England and Wales fall below a new European environment standard.

On a positive note water standards have improved across the UK for the 19th year in a row and wildlife is returning to a vast majority of the rivers.

6,000 rivers were surveyed and only 5 were classified as ‘pristine’. Environment groups are asking for tougher action to be taken to improve Britain’s water ways.

Improvements have been made over the last 20 years but the Environment Agency knows that things could be better.

The improvements in water quality have led to the return of some species which were at one point thought to be in terminal decline along some stretches of Britain’s rivers.

Otters, eels and Salmon have all returned to the Thames, Mersey and Tyne.

Despite these improvements the new European Water Framework Directive which became law in the UK in 2003 sets a much higher quality standard. It uses a much wider and more sophisticated range of tests to determine the water quality.

Under the new directive only 5 rivers satisfy the highest standards and they are situated in remote areas of Northumberland and Wales. 117 rivers have been newly classified as ‘bad’ these include stretches of the rivers Trent and Stour.

The Environment Agency has accepted that they need to act now to protect our waterways for future generations. They have announced the introduction of new measures which aim to improve more rivers by 2015.

The River Basin Management Plans include tackling discharge from sewage works, limiting the removal of water from rivers and preventing pollution from farmland and built up areas leaking into our watercourses.

It is important that we do something about the state of the UK’s rivers now rather than just hoping it will sort itself out. It is time we thought about future generations and made more of an effort to protect our planet.

Tags: Environment, Environment Agency, EU, EU standards, pollution, rivers, water, waterways

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 at 11:32 am and is filed under Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.