In a speech on 1 November 2022, the CEO of the Environment Agency, James Bevan, proposed that the UK should to lower the standards for “good chemical status” and “good ecological status” set by the Water Framework Directive, which have not been met in the 22 years since it was enacted in 2000 -
“I would reform the Water Framework Directive (WFD) in order to drive better environmental outcomes. Each time I say this I get flak from everyone, so let me say again for the avoidance of doubt, I’d reform it in order to enhance water quality and restore nature, not degrade them. The WFD rightly sets high standards for water quality in rivers, lakes, estuaries and groundwater. But the way it requires us to categorise the status of those waters is complex, and can be misleading about the real state of those waters, both for better and for worse. And because the Directive stipulates that waters can only get “good” status if they tick all of several different boxes, it can force regulators to focus time and resources on indicators that may not make much difference to the actual water quality, taking focus away from things that would. I wouldn’t repeal the WFD. But I would reform it, to ensure it drives action that will deliver the clean and plentiful water we all want.”
The speech was reported by Sandra Laville in The Guardian on 3 November 2022, together with the critical responses from Wildlife & Countryside Link and the Rivers Trust –
It is sad to see the CEO of the Environment Agency feeling obliged to welcome the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill, which contains the proposed revocation of all the standards in the Water Framework Directive, as if it is some sort of genuine effort to improve the state of our environment, instead of an ill conceived, doctrinaire and determined effort to do as much damage to all of the environmental laws that happen to be retained EU law as can be accommodated in the next 18 months. No Minister has come forward with any single measure or proposal to replace them, on water quality, air quality, chemicals, Habitats or anything else.
The standards of which James Bevan complains were in large part set with considerable input from scientific experts from the Environment Agency itself, and the negotiation of the Water Framework was concluded under the UK Presidency of the European Union. It is nonsense to say that the problem with achieving all of the standards is draining the Agency’s time and resources. Perhaps it is more a question of what the Minister’s Special Advisers might call the “Comms” or the “Optics”. It just doesn’t look good to keep being reminded of this total, absolute, 100% failure.
The standards are certainly hard to meet in full across Europe, given society’s preference for treating rivers as sewers. We like to allow almost unregulated application of agricultural chemicals, pesticides and herbicides at a landscape scale. We allow the frequent application of untreated sewage from CSO sewers not just in times of exceptional rainfall but in some cases whenever it suits the operators. And not all contributions to rivers are by “them”, some are from “us” in the form of household chemicals, fatbergs, reefs of wet wipes, microplastics from car tyres.
The net result is that 0% of England’s rivers meet overall standards set in 2000 for “good chemical status” and 84% also fail to meet “good ecological status”, which is almost more concerning for the food chain and overall health and biodiversity of rivers.
But in case we consider such total failure of law, regulation and policy to be inevitable, it is worth noting that comparable figures for the rest of the EU suggest that while compliance with the WFD is difficult, the rest of the EU is making a much better job of it than the UK. In the European Overview of River Basin Management Plans prepared by the European Commission for 2021 it states that -
Overall ecological status was high or good in 40% or river water bodies, and improving. The UK figure was 16% and no improvement.
Some 46% of EU surface waters fail to achieve good chemical status, particularly taking into account ubiquitous persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic Priority Substances. The UK figure for England was 100% failure.
The Environment Agency certainly does suffer from a critical shortage in enforcement capacity and funding. In 2021 it was reported that the UK government had cut Environment Agency funding for enforcement by half, from £157.3 million in 2010 to £75.6 million today. In January 2021 The Times reported that the then Chair of the Environment Agency Emma Howard Boyd had written to the then Secretary of State for Environment Food and Rural Affairs George Eustice in August 2020 to point out that –
“All this is allowing more people and businesses to break the environmental rules”
The letter also pointed out that the Agency –
“now has only the resources to attend the most serious environmental incidents”.
and
“Water company performance, which had been improving for most of the last decade, has now gone into reverse, with more pollution incidents last year than in previous years, for which we and the government are being increasingly heavily criticised”.
The Environment Agency will also suffer in effectiveness if Ministers show no political will to support enforcement of existing laws. The Secretary of State for Environment Food & Rural Affairs under the administration of Prime Minister Liz Truss and Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, Ranil Jayewardena, told the Conservative Party Conference in summer 2022 that –
“...my Department should no longer be seen as one that follows the EU, imposes rules and impedes innovation.
Instead of being a regulatory department, we are now an economic growth department.”
Nobody said that the task of the Environment Agency in these circumstances was easy, or that the task of cleaning up our rivers was straightforward. To the contrary, the task and complexity was very well addressed by the report of the House of Commons Environment Audit Committee on Water Quality in Rivers, which I reported on in January 2022, and which, notably, contains none of the defeatism reflected in the remarks from the Environment Agency’s CEO -
https://www.wyesideconsulting.com/news/englands-rivers-under-the-microscope
Yet in the end, leaders need to lead, and the proper response to the shameful state of our rivers is definitely not to respond to the ideology of the day by further lowering standards that should have been met many years ago.