Salmon and Trout Association: Water Framework Directive

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) is seen by many as the most fundamental piece of water legislation ever. It aims to restore the biodiversity and functioning of all surface freshwater bodies, including; lakes, streams, rivers, groundwaters, groundwater dependant ecosystems, estuaries and coastal waters, out to one mile from low-water. The Directive, if implemented properly, has the potential to greatly improve our freshwater ecosystems. It includes provisions to tackle diffuse pollution, restore the physical condition of water bodies, reconnect floodplains and improve the quality of raw drinking water.

If correctly implemented, therefore, WFD will have far reaching benefits for fisheries!

WFD moves away from previous chemical based monitoring to a more rounded monitoring approach, in which biological indicators are key. The Directive requires Member States to achieve ‘good ecological status’ (GES) in all surface freshwater bodies by 2015, whilst preventing any further deterioration in the health of their waters. The Directive, also importantly, requires stakeholder communication and cooperation in river basin management planning, in order to locally plan the most sustainable use of water.

WFD came into force in December 2000, and was transposed into UK law by December 2003. River Basin Management Plans will set the environmental objectives for each body of water and the Programmes of Measures necessary to meet those objectives. The first cycle of WFD implementation will run from 2009-2015.

WFD will also encompass a number of existing European Directives, although the same protection which existed under the earlier Directive will still be maintained. The incorporated Directives will include the Surface Water Abstraction Directive by the end of 2009, and the Freshwater Fish Directive, Groundwater Directive and Dangerous Substances Directive by the end of 2013. Conservation sites identified under the Habitats Directive and Birds Directive for water purposes will be designated as ‘protected areas’ under WFD.

S&TA is working, alongside the Blueprint for Water team, to ensure that the aquatic environment and our fisheries get the best possible protection and enhancement from the WFD process.

Latest News
WFD National Liaison Panel
Consultation Responses

Latest News;

February 2009

The Draft River Basin Management Plans for each of the 11 river basin districts in England and Wales, under the European Water Framework Directive (WFD), have recently been published for consultation. Each draft River Basin Management Plan describes the main issues to be addressed for each river basin district, and highlights some key actions proposed for dealing with them in an attempt to bring all water bodies up to good ecological status.

Your local draft River Basin Management Plans can be found at;

http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/research/planning/33106.aspx

The proposals in these draft plans will affect your local fisheries and environment. But, these are currently draft plans, so there is still time to influence them and make our voices heard.

HQ will be making a generic, high level response to the consultations, but we really need your help to highlight issues at the local level. The consultation runs until 22 June 2009, but in order to help us coordinate responses, please provide any comments you have to us as soon as possible. S&TA will response individually to all the draft River Basin Management Plans on which we receive comments. We would really appreciate your time, help, and local knowledge to ensure that all the plans deliver for fisheries.

We would also strongly recommend that you submit your comments separately as well, in order to truly maximize our fisheries’ voice.

October 2008

WFD is reaching a critical stage at the end of 2008, with the publications of the River Basin Management Plans (RBMP). The S&TA, and our Wildlife and Countryside Link partners, currently share a real concern about the level of ambition within the EA and Defra to deliver genuine improvements through WFD, and feel the original objectives of the WFD are being heavily diluted due to financial and timing restraints.

WFD, as most of you will now know, requires all member states to achieve ‘good ecological status’ (GES) in all water bodies by 2015. In England and Wales, despite WFD being transposed into UK Law back in 2003, we have seen a rushed classification process in the final few months before the first cycle of implementing measures begins next year. Logically, in order to tackle WFD classification, you would think it would first be sensible to identify the current status of each water body, and what GES for that water body should be. With this information to hand, calculations could then be made to ascertain the gap between current status and GES, in order to identify what measures are needed to achieve GES. After this, the measures could be adequately assessed to determine if they are achievable, technically feasible or disproportionately costly. From this basis it could be decided whether to 1) implement measures to achieve GES, 2) If disproportionately costly; set alterative objectives or 3) if technically infeasible; delay when GES should be achieved. The Environment Agency (EA), however, do not seem to have approached the classification and implementation of WFD in this way. In fact, many River Basin District Liaison Panels were asked to identify measures for achieving GES, before the current status of relevant water bodies had even been determined!

In May, Defra released the River Basin Planning Guidance Volume 2 for consultation. The S&TA responded with concern over the lack of transparency and detail in the guidance. The guidance presented little clarity as to how the standards and conditions had been developed and how they related to the biological quality elements. We were also alarmed that the guidelines supported positive classification, unless negative impacts could be proved, therefore implying a higher confidence would be needed to report negative impacts. This is very concerning, as it could make moderate or poor classification very difficult to prove, even for high risk water bodies. The guidance also stated that hydro-morphological (the physical characteristics of a water body, such as its shape and boundaries) and certain chemical and physiochemical elements, achieving a high confidence of failure, would not necessarily be sufficient on there own to provide high confidence that the water body was worse than good status. This is not compatible with the WFD’s ‘one-out all-out’ approach to classification, and also raises concerns as hydro-morphological continuity is of great importance to migrating species.

The guidance also stated that measures should not be implemented where the reasons for failure to meet GES could not be identified. This was also very worrying, as it could mean insufficient monitoring data, which is currently a huge problem on many water bodies, could result in a classification bias because of “low confidence” in the reasons of water body failure.

The lack of clarity in the guidance, especially with regards to measures appraisal, is fuelling concern about how the Directive will actually be implemented on the ground. We feel a key downfall of the current Draft RBMP round is the lack of transparency and detail, which makes meaningful stakeholder engagement very difficult. With currently no indication as to where the additional £900 million per year needed to implement WFD will come from, the EA have highlighted the importance of stakeholder participation in the co-delivery of WFD. In order to do this, stakeholders must be involved with the process, and be able to understand how the programme of measures has been evaluated, and how decisions have been made on which measures should be adopted.

All is not yet lost with WFD, but success does require Defra and the EA to make clear their drive to achieve the ecological objectives of the Directive, and properly engage stakeholders in the process.

Now is also the time to start thinking about the next cycle of WFD, from 2015-2021, because, along with the rest of Europe, the EA has stated that it will take three 6-year cycles to achieve all WFD’s objectives, which takes us to 2027! Limitations highlighted in the first cycle, such as lack of monitoring data, must be addressed now in order to better inform future cycles.

The S&TA are still concerned with the failure to include sediment standards in the first round of WFD. Sediment pollution is too serious a problem to be ignored, not only due to its direct impact on fish and invertebrate fauna, but also its high association with other containments. We understand the problems associated with a single generic standard but feel WFD is the prefect driver to establish local catchment scale management to address excess sediment delivery to watercourses.

We feel it is also very important to link time frames for WFD with other important drivers, such as the PR09 water price review, in order to maximise resources and delivery. The S&TA will continue to lobby for the removal of damaging abstraction licenses, as GES cannot be achieved on over abstracted systems, such as the River Itchen, without addressing the fundamental component of river flow.

March 2008

The long-awaited Defra Water Strategy was published in February under the title Future Water. It is a comprehensive, 100 page document, and it covers many of the issues that we set out in the Blueprint for Water.

The more significant issues include:

Water metering: Currently, only one third of households have meters, and the Government wishes to see this increase significantly, especially in water stressed areas. Where meters are fitted, they reduce consumption by at least 10%.

Domestic consumption: A target for reducing consumption to 130 litres per head per day by 2030, from a present average of 150 litres.

Sustainable water supplies: Controlling abstraction is of paramount importance to fisheries interests, and is an issue well covered in the Strategy, with environmental damage from excessive abstraction cited as the biggest threat. There is also welcome talk of protection for ground water supplies.

Anglers important to the environment: There is an explicit acknowledgement in the document that anglers are beneficial to the environment. This is a tremendous achievement for fisheries NGOs and is, in our experience, the first time any government has included such a statement in an official Strategy.

Keeping water on the land: This was one of the specific Blueprint asks, and has been accepted as crucial by Defra, not only in alleviating flood risk and creating biodiversity, but in providing important storage sites, such as peat bogs, to bind up carbon.

Polluter Pays principle (PPP): Again, this was a Blueprint ask, and sets the principle that water polluters should pay all restoration costs. However, one concern is the implication that diffuse pollution from agriculture, accepted as one of the most damaging impacts on the aquatic environment, is too difficult to prove under the PPP.

Catchment sensitive farming (CSF): Defra’s CSF scheme will continue for a further three years, giving advice to farmers in some forty priority catchments about the potential risks from agricultural impact. This includes seepage into groundwater aquifers as well as direct feed to watercourses.

Fish passes for all species: For the first time, acknowledgement is given to the need for fish passes to allow migration of all fish species, not just salmon and sea trout. In our response, we will urge rock ramp type constructions where possible, allowing invertebrates, as well as fish, free access to the whole river corridor.

Our final comment is that, while this, for the main part, is a welcome document, there is a suspicion of much fine talk, but little on actual delivery. Above all else, there is no mention here of extra funding to deliver WFD objectives, and one is left with the age-old concern of whether or not the Government has genuine commitment to long term protection of the aquatic environment and its dependent species.

With our Blueprint colleagues within Wildlife and Countryside Link, we will continue to monitor Government’s performance against our initial demands for the future of water management and conservation, and we will not flinch from challenging them if they fail to deliver!

Defra WFD National Liaison Panel

S&TA CEO, Paul Knight, is one of only twenty people invited to sit on the Environment Agency’s (EA) national stakeholders’ group to advise on delivery of the Water Framework Directive (WFD). He is on the group to represent fisheries and riparian owners’ interests.

The idea of this national group is that it feeds into the ten regional River Basin Advisory Panels, which are set by the terms of the Directive with the task of producing river basin plans by the end of 2009. However, while we are delighted to be included, we can’t help thinking that too much emphasis is being placed on national and regional plans, while very little thought is currently being given to individual catchments, which is where the bulk of the work will be required if we are to meet the WFD deadline of 2015.

Consultation Responses

S&TA, AST and ART response to EA’s hydropower consultation
S&TA (2009). Environmental standards for farming consultation
S&TA Humber River Basin Management Response
S&TA. (2009). Generic response to WFD River Basin Management Plans
S&TA. (2009). Response to Water Protection Zone Consultation
S&TA. (2009). (Wales). Response to Water Protection Zone Consultation
S&TA. (2008). River Basin Planning Guidance Two
S&TA. (2006). UKTAG response
FACT. (2006). UKTAG response

WFD Stakeholder Meeting Minutes and Information

February 2009 October 2008 April 2008 April 2007 February2007 September 2006