Ireland to fail in meeting rivers and lakes status restoration goal, EPA warns

from the Irish Times.

Ireland will fail to meet the EU and national goal of restoring all waters including rivers and lakes to good or better status by 2027, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has warned, saying agriculture was having a “disproportionate” impact on declining standards.

While improvements are being made in some areas, its latest assessment finds these are being offset by declines in water quality elsewhere with areas in the south and southeast of most concern. This is due to their proximity to intensive agriculture, notably dairy farms, which is causing “run-off”.

The EPA’s Water Quality in Ireland Report (2016-2021), which assesses Ireland’s rivers, lakes, estuaries, coastal and groundwaters, said “urgent and targeted action is required to reduce nitrogen emissions from agriculture” in these areas.

Speaking ahead of the publication of the report on Thursday night, EPA director general Laura Burke said Ireland had long “traded on the image of a clean, green island” to promote tourism and its agriculture sector. However, “we are trending in the wrong direction” in environmental standards.

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A revised nitrates action programme (NAP) is coming into operation in Ireland with tighter regulations on slurry spreading and on applying chemical fertilisers on land.

Dr Eimear Cotter, director of the EPA’s office of evidence and assessment, said: “The scale of the declines in our estuaries and coastal waters is alarming. In recent years the EPA highlighted that nutrient levels in our rivers and groundwaters are too high and that trends were going in the wrong direction.

“We are now seeing the impact of these emissions on our estuaries and coastal waters. Areas such as Cork Harbour, Wexford Harbour and the Slaney, Suir and Nore estuaries have lost their good water quality status. This directly impacts the marine biodiversity and ecological value in these areas,” she said.

The main pressures on Irish water quality are agriculture; physical changes such as land drainage and dredging; forestry activities; and discharges from urban wastewater. These activities can lead to run-off of nutrients, sediment and pesticides, thereby damaging habitats.