The Irish Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency (EPA) has recently pub­lished, Water Qual­ity in Ire­land 2007-09, the lat­est in a series of three-year reports track­ing lev­els of Irish water qual­ity. The report points to some areas of improve­ment, but also high­lights sig­nif­i­cant water qual­ity prob­lems that ought to cause seri­ous concern.

Water qual­ity in ground­wa­ter, rivers, lakes, canals, estu­ar­ies and coastal waters are exam­ined in the report, using two dif­fer­ent forms of assess­ment. The EPA uses a new assess­ment frame­work set out by the EU’s Water Frame­work Direc­tive (WFD, 2000), whose stan­dards Ire­land must meet by 2015. The WFD uses a scale of High, Good, Mod­er­ate, Poor, Bad, where a High or Good sta­tus implies that there is almost no human impact on a given body of water. The require­ment for 2015 is that all cur­rent High sta­tus waters be pro­tected and all other waters be brought up to a Good level. The EPA also con­tin­ues to use (for com­par­i­son pur­poses) the gen­er­ally less strin­gent assess­ment cri­te­ria it has used in past reports.

Ground­wa­ter

About 25% of all Irish drink­ing water is sourced from ground­wa­ter, with ground­wa­ter also an impor­tant source of river and sur­face water. Under WFD cri­te­ria, 85% of ground­wa­ter is assessed as Good/High and 15% is Poor – a good result. Nitrate and phos­phate lev­els were also lower on the whole in ground­wa­ter, if increas­ing in some areas of the coun­try, and the report notes that heavy rain­fall dur­ing the test­ing period may have arti­fi­cially sup­pressed lev­els. A sig­nif­i­cant worry is that 34% of sam­ples were shown to con­tain fae­cal col­iform bac­te­ria – human or ani­mal fae­cal waste being the usual source.

Rivers & Lakes

Under WFD cri­te­ria, only 52% of river basin waters attain the nec­es­sary High or Good rat­ing, 28% are Mod­er­ate and 20% are Poor or Bad. Under the older, less demand­ing clas­si­fi­ca­tion sys­tem, the per­cent­age of unpol­luted rivers rise to 69%, but even this rep­re­sents a 10% drop over the past 20 years.

Again, under WFD clas­si­fi­ca­tions, only 47% of lakes achieved the required High or Good sta­tus, with some 41% Mod­er­ate. The main prob­lem here appears to be algal bloom, due to phos­phate lev­els. Under the older EPA clas­si­fi­ca­tion approx­i­mately 80% of lakes would count as sat­is­fac­tory. These results for rivers and lakes are wor­ry­ing as they are a major source of our domes­tic water supply.

A pos­i­tive devel­op­ment is that fish kills are down sig­nif­i­cantly on pre­vi­ous reports. Two three-year peri­ods in the 1980s reported over 220 fish kills in each, mainly from agri­cul­tural pol­lu­tion, 2008 saw 32 fish kills, and 2009 six­teen, none of these six­teen hav­ing an agri­cul­tural source.

“Pri­or­ity haz­ardous sub­stances” such as her­bi­cides, pes­ti­cides and met­als do not appear to be a sig­nif­i­cant cause for con­cern, though accept­able lev­els are exceeded in a small num­ber of cases.

Canals

Almost all canals reached the min­i­mum WFD stan­dard required.

Estu­ar­ies and Coastal Regions

There have been sig­nif­i­cant improve­ments in these cat­e­gories, due to licens­ing of waste water processes and increased sec­ondary treat­ment of waste water. Nonethe­less, only 46% of estu­ar­ies and coastal achieved a WFD High or Good status.

Con­clu­sions

Over­all, Ire­land scores a cred­itable 85% Good/High sta­tus on ground­wa­ter qual­ity and a more wor­ry­ing 50% or so across all sur­face waters. Fur­ther sig­nif­i­cant improve­ments are needed in indus­try, busi­nesses and agri­cul­ture, but also far greater atten­tion is needed to domes­tic water waste and its treat­ment. Pol­lu­tion from a spe­cific point source is quite often linked, by the report, to inad­e­quate waste water treat­ment sys­tems in domes­tic houses and hous­ing developments.

The report does not envis­age sig­nif­i­cant improve­ment in Irish water qual­ity or a meet­ing of EU stan­dards with­out sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment. At the same time, its call for enthu­si­asm and vig­i­lance on the part of local author­ity work­ers, might be extended to us all, whether domes­tic, busi­ness, indus­try or agri­cul­tural users of water. We need enthu­si­asm for greater pro­tec­tion of our water resources, vig­i­lance about the kinds of waste and pol­lu­tants we allow con­t­a­m­i­nate them, and cre­ativ­ity in find­ing new greener, more water-efficient practices.

If you wish to delve into the report, you will find it here. You might also like to con­sult a more detailed analy­sis of the report’s find­ings on IrishEnvironment.com.