Ireland is at risk of failing to achieve EU water quality standards unless improvements are made more quickly. While lakes and rivers have seen some progress, too many groundwater samples are polluted with human and animal waste, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Tim O'Brienreports.
Turning our unacceptably contaminated water resources around will require expensive remedial measures, the EPA indicates in a report launched today.
According to the report, Water Quality in Ireland 2006, almost one-third of the Republic's rivers, nearly a quarter of estuarine and coastal waters, and 8 per cent of lakes contain "an unacceptable and sizeable level of pollution".
The report also highlights an alarming level of contamination in groundwaters, which provide drinking water via wells. The EPA study showed that 57 per cent of groundwater sampling sites contained faecal coliforms, bacteria indicating the presence of human and animal waste.
The agency believes this reflects over-dependence on one-off housing with septic tanks and farmyard wells unprotected from animal pollution.
The report will make grim reading for Green Party Minister for the Environment John Gormley, who receives a copy of it this afternoon from the EPA.
Some 13,000km of river and stream channels, 421 lakes, 69 tidal water bodies and 285 groundwater sources were monitored between 2004 and 2006 for the report.
It found that while water quality in rivers and lakes improved slightly on the previous two years, the rate of improvement was not fast enough to meet the Water Framework Directive by the target year 2015. Some 90 per cent of rivers in the southwestern river basin district were categorised as unpolluted, compared with just 54 per cent in the eastern river basin district.
Groundwater quality declined in the latest test period, the study found. And although the number of fish kills, at 34, was down by about 20 per cent, the EPA viewed this still as unacceptable. One positive note was that the overall quality of bathing water remained good.
EPA director general Dr Mary Kelly said eutrophication of rivers, lakes and tidal waters continued to be the main threat to surface waters, with agricultural and municipal discharges being the key contributors. Eutrophication means excessive richness of nutrients in a body of water, frequently due to run-off from the land.
Dr Kelly said that although improvements in river and lake water quality had been observed, groundwater quality showed a downward trend, as did estuarine and coastal waters. "The challenge under the Water Framework Directive is to protect our high-status waters and have all waters, both surface and groundwater, in good or higher status by 2015."