The country will fail to meet the target of restoring all waters to \u201cgood\u201d or better status by 2027 if the scale and pace of progress is not improved, a new EPA report has found.<\/p>\n
The latest Water Quality in Ireland Report, which assessed the quality of Ireland\u2019s rivers, lakes, estuaries, coastal waters, canals and groundwaters between 2019 and last year, found an overall deterioration in water quality despite some improvements.<\/p>\n
Just over half of rivers, lakes, estuaries and coastal waters met their water quality objectives and were found to be in a satisfactory ecological condition \u2013 a 2pc decline since the last three-yearly assessment.<\/p>\n
Excess nutrients from agriculture, urban wastewater and other human activities remain the biggest challenge to achieving better water quality.<\/p>\n
Land and river drainage, forestry and urban development are among the activities that have contributed to damage of the physical condition of habitats.<\/p>\n
While nutrient levels are reducing in areas where actions are being targeted, the EPA has said the scale and pace of implementation must be increased.<\/p>\n
Coastal waters had the highest percentage of waters in \u201chigh\u201d or \u201cgood\u201d ecological status (82pc) followed by lakes (68pc).<\/p>\n
More than half (52pc) of river water bodies are in an \u201cunsatisfactory\u201d, \u201cmoderate\u201d, \u201cpoor\u201d or \u201cbad\u201d ecological status.<\/p>\n
Transitional waters, which include estuaries and coastal lagoons, are in the poorest shape of any water body type, with 70pc in an unsatisfactory condition.<\/p>\n
It compares to 92pc of groundwaters being in \u201cgood\u201d status, and 87pc of canals achieving their water quality targets.<\/p>\n
Some improvements were found in areas that had previously declined, with Clew Bay and \u00adSligo Bay returning to \u201cgood\u201d status. Waterford Harbour also returned to \u201cgood\u201d status, though the water bodies upstream all remain at \u201cmoderate\u201d or worse status.<\/p>\n
The report notes that the goal of restoring all waters to \u201cgood\u201d status by 2027 is \u201cnot going to be achieved\u201d as improvements are being \u201ccancelled out by declines elsewhere\u201d.<\/p>\n
It said \u201csignificant\u201d actions around targeted measures, improved data sharing and further investment are necessary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The country will fail to meet the target of restoring all waters to \u201cgood\u201d or better status by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[246,2244,61,60,15552,43],"class_list":["post-78858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-environment","tag-eu","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-maeve-mctaggart","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}