Published: 15 December 2005
Holistic Water
The Principles for achieving an increasingly holistic approach to managing the water environment are set out in a Defra and Welsh Assembly Government consultation launched this week.
This represents a further step towards meeting the challenging demands of the Water Framework Directive (WFD), a Europe-wide plan which considers water not just in terms of individual rivers, lakes or estuaries, but acknowledges its inextricable relationship with ecosystems as a whole.
WFD Timetable
The WFD requires EC Member States to put in place River Basin Management Plans (RBMPs) for managing the water environment. Each RBMP must apply to a "river basin district" (a geographical area which is defined based on hydrology).
The WFD introduces a 6 yearly cycle of river basin planning.
A River Basin Management Plan for each river basin district must be produced in 2009, 2015, 2021 and so on. Amongst other things, the plans must list the environmental objectives for that district, justify how and where alternative objectives have been used, and summarise the programme of measures.
The consultation focuses on the nine river basin districts in England and Wales, and one of the two cross-border river basin districts in England and Scotland, each of which is required to have a River Basin Management Plan (RBMP).
It proposes guiding principles for the Environment Agency in carrying out river basin planning and in particular in developing the RBMPs.
Although the Environment Agency has overall responsibility for drawing up the plans, the WFD requires water management issues to be considered right across the hydrological cycle, and alongside environmental, social and economic priorities.
To achieve this, the Environment Agency will work in partnership with the public, private and voluntary sector organisations affected by the RBMPs.
The Environment Agency will publish shortly its Framework for river basin planning, the follow-up to its consultation document ‘Water for Life and Livelihoods - a strategy for river basin planning’ which was published in January 2005.
This guidance and the Environment Agency Framework complement each other.
The guidance will give greater certainty for the Environment Agency and others by setting out Ministerial expectations for:
· the principles of the river basin planning process; and
· the RBMPs and other documents which the Environment Agency must produce.
The Environment Agency's Framework will give more detail about its approach to implementing the river basin planning process, in particular its approach to partnership working.
Programmes of Measures
Included within the River Basin Management Plans will be a summary programme of measures to address the pressures on our waters.
One of the key pressures on our waters, highlighted by the Characterisation reports in March of this year, is diffuse pollution from agricultural and non-agricultural sources.
One of the new measures that will be put in place to address this pressure is catchment sensitive farming (CSF). Further information on CSF in England will be released on the 19th December 2005.
The consultation closes on 7th March 2006.
Further information
Consultation
Defra Water Quality website
Water for Life and Livelihoods - a strategy for river basin planning
Catchment sensitive farming (CSF)
River Basin Management Plan (RBMP) - Scotland
River Basin Management Plan (RBMP)
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