Northern Ireland Water Classification Statistics Report 2024 released
Date published:
The 2024 Northern Ireland Water Classification Statistics Report has been published today by the Northern Ireland Environment Agency and Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs.
This statistical report contains updated water body status (classification) for Northern Ireland river, lake and transitional and coastal bodies predominantly based on monitoring data covering the period 2018 to 2023 inclusive.
Since 2018, the presence of ubiquitous, persistent, bioaccumulative, toxic (uPBT) substances have been assessed as part of chemical status. The uPBT substances are monitored by analysing concentrations in both the water column and in biota. However, biota samples are only collected at selected surface water monitoring stations and not across the entire network. Due to their bioaccumulative and persistent nature, uPBT substances have been detected at all monitored stations and resulted in failures of all of those stations. It is recognised that uPBT substances would cause more failures if additional stations were monitored. For this reason, the uPBT failures have been extrapolated to all surface water bodies across Northern Ireland, meaning that none of our rivers, lakes, transitional and coastal water bodies will meet good chemical status.
Since the inclusion of uPBT substances and the extrapolation of the related failures to all water bodies, no surface water body can achieve better than moderate overall surface water status by default (when ecological and chemical status are combined). This means overall surface water status no longer provides detailed information at river basin district or water body level. The report primarily compares ecological and chemical status of surface water bodies to different time periods for both Northern Ireland and river basin districts.
The key points are:
River Ecological Status
- In 2024, 131 (29%) of the 450 river water bodies were classified as good or high ecological status. This figure includes 2 river water bodies classified as high.
Lake Ecological Status
- In 2024, 5 (24%) of the 21 lake water bodies were classified as good ecological status. No lake water bodies were classified as high ecological status.
Transitional & Coastal Ecological Status
- In 2024, 10 (40%) water bodies achieved good ecological status. No transitional or coastal water body achieved high ecological status.
River Chemical Status
- In 2024, when excluding uPBT substances but including cypermethrin failures, 383 (85%) river water bodies achieved good chemical status.
Lake Chemical Status
- In 2024, when excluding uPBT substances but including cypermethrin failures, 11 (52%) lake water bodies achieved good chemical status.
Transitional & Coastal Chemical Status
- In 2024, when excluding uPBT substances but including cypermethrin failures, 2 (8%) achieved good chemical status and 23 (92%) failed to achieve good chemical status.
The report also provides information on chemical status results when both uPBT substances and cypermethrin are excluded and also when both are included. Tables and charts provide results by River Basin Districts. For completeness, overall status classification for all water bodies is provided in the report annex.
A public webinar event discussing the latest results has been organised for Friday, 7 March from 12:30 to 13:30pm.
Register for the upcoming NI Water Classification Statistics Webinar
Notes to editors:
- This report is an update on the status of surface water body types: rivers, lakes and transitional & coastal. Due to a long lag time, groundwater body classifications are not updated mid-cycle. The 2021 groundwater body status, which is included the Northern Ireland Water Framework Statistics report 2021 remains current.
- Water bodies are assessed against a number of elements as required by the Water Framework Directive (Classification, Priority Substances and Shellfish Waters) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2015 and Water Environment (Water Framework Directive) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2017. For surface waters, ecological status is assessed against five classes: bad; poor; moderate; good; and high. Chemical status surface water bodies are assessed against two classes: good and failing to achieve good.
- As stated previously, the presence of ubiquitous, persistent, bioaccumulative, toxic (uPBT) substances have been assessed as part of chemical status analysis. Due to their bioaccumulative and persistent nature, uPBT substances have been detected at all monitored stations and resulted in failures of all of those stations. uPBT failures have been extrapolated to all surface water bodies across Northern Ireland, meaning that none of our rivers, lakes, transitional & coastal water bodies will meet overall good status (when ecological and chemical status are combined). Consequently, the report provides information on ecological and chemical status separately to examine the changes in more detail.
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