A nationwide annual health check of England’s water bodies has been delayed by six years, prompting anger from campaigners and politicians, as public alarm grows over the state of the nation’s rivers and coasts.The assessments, undertaken by the Environment Agency, look at the ecological and chemical condition of rivers, lakes, groundwater, and transitional and coastal waters, and are required under the Water Framework Directive (WFD).In 2019, the last time the assessments took place, just 14% of rivers were in good ecological health and none met standards for good chemical health.
“Democracy demands transparency, and that’s one more thing this government is not delivering.”The Guardian and Watershed Investigations, working with the Wildlife Trusts, found that partial results – about 21% of the total assessments delivered in 2019 (20,424 compared with 94,952) – were published this month but not flagged in the usual places on the Environment Agency or Defra’s website.
“The combination of issues like abstraction and pollution from farms, sewage works and urban areas, mean that few rivers are healthy.
The Liberal Democrats have repeatedly called for the Conservatives to take action, yet instead of doing so they seem to be trying to hide the problem.”Under the WFD, all water bodies were meant to meet ‘good’ status by 2015.
In 2017, former Environment Agency chair Sir James Bevan told a government select committee that it would not be possible to meet the 2027 date.Bevan has called for an overhaul of the way the WFD assessments are made, saying it should be less stringent so that more rivers could be given a clean bill of health.
He argued that the “one-out-all-out rule”, under which if a water body fails on just one of a number of elements, the whole river fails, masks any improvements that may have been achieved across other parameters.In the meantime, Defra has set itself a less well defined new target of getting rivers back to close to their natural state as soon as is practicable.A spokesperson for Defra said the Environment Agency was legally obliged to publish a full set of data for every water body in England every six years.
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A nationwide annual health check of England’s water bodies has been delayed by six years, prompting anger from campaigners and politicians, as public alarm grows over the state of the nation’s rivers and coasts.The assessments, undertaken by the Environment Agency, look at the ecological and chemical condition of rivers, lakes, groundwater, and transitional and coastal waters, and are required under the Water Framework Directive (WFD).In 2019, the last time the assessments took place, just 14% of rivers were in good ecological health and none met standards for good chemical health.
“Democracy demands transparency, and that’s one more thing this government is not delivering.”The Guardian and Watershed Investigations, working with the Wildlife Trusts, found that partial results – about 21% of the total assessments delivered in 2019 (20,424 compared with 94,952) – were published this month but not flagged in the usual places on the Environment Agency or Defra’s website.
“The combination of issues like abstraction and pollution from farms, sewage works and urban areas, mean that few rivers are healthy.
The Liberal Democrats have repeatedly called for the Conservatives to take action, yet instead of doing so they seem to be trying to hide the problem.”Under the WFD, all water bodies were meant to meet ‘good’ status by 2015.
In 2017, former Environment Agency chair Sir James Bevan told a government select committee that it would not be possible to meet the 2027 date.Bevan has called for an overhaul of the way the WFD assessments are made, saying it should be less stringent so that more rivers could be given a clean bill of health.
He argued that the “one-out-all-out rule”, under which if a water body fails on just one of a number of elements, the whole river fails, masks any improvements that may have been achieved across other parameters.In the meantime, Defra has set itself a less well defined new target of getting rivers back to close to their natural state as soon as is practicable.A spokesperson for Defra said the Environment Agency was legally obliged to publish a full set of data for every water body in England every six years.
The original article contains 881 words, the summary contains 354 words. Saved 60%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!