Waterford City Council, at its April meeting, adopted a river basin management plan aimed at achieving ‘good’ ground water status in the city by 2027 (currently ‘poor’) and ‘good’ river water status by 2021 (currently ‘moderate’).
Details were outlined by Colette Byrne, Director of Services for Environmental Services and Planning.
She said the adoption of a river basin plan was a requirement of the EU Water Framework Directive. The plan, to be prepared on a six year cycle, was ‘catchment’ based and the South East plan involved 13 local authorities.
The Directive generally required all waters to achieve ‘good’ status by 2015 unless the time period needed to be extended into subsequent planning cycles due to technical feasibility or natural recovery lag times.
The plan set out a series of measures that must be implemented and the City Council proposed to supplement the measures with specific actions to remediate John’s River and its tributaries, in particular Lisduggan stream. The Council had provided funding in its annual budget for a programme of works for John’s River with a view to achieving the plan objectives.
Ms Byrne said there would be ongoing monitoring of water quality to determine if the actions taken were having the necessary impact or if further works were required to achieve ‘good’ status within the stated timeframe.
