The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) has welcomed agreement on new European legislation which will dramatically improve the protection for Scotland's groundwater, rivers, lochs, estuaries and coastal waters.

The Water Framework Directive will bring the most important change in the Scottish laws covering the water environment since the 1970's, when controls over the discharge of pollutants from factories and sewage works were strengthened. Since then, Scotland has been very successful in stopping pollution. However, pollution problems have shifted from discharges from pipes to more widespread sources of diffuse pollution which are difficult to address using existing legislation (see note 2).

Once transposed into Scottish law, the Water Framework Directive will help address diffuse pollution as well as other types of environmental damage, such as those caused by water abstractions and engineering activities.

Details are only now emerging of the agreement between the European Council and Parliament about the Directive. SEPA Chairman Ken Collins, who was until last year the Chairman of the European Parliament's Environment Committee and was closely associated with the development the Directive, said

"Negotiations have been difficult, with representatives working until the early hours of the morning to deliver an approach which will protect Europe's water for the next 30 years. But now we have, in the Water Framework Directive, legislation which will allow Scotland to protect and improve its water environment. This is great news for the environment and for the Scottish economy, which relies so heavily on clean water and a high quality environment."

The need for abstraction control
There has been some controversy about abstraction control, because there is a perception that Scotland has plenty of water, so people can abstract water from watercourses or groundwater as and when they please. In fact abstraction can cause serious problems, especially on the east coast of Scotland (see note 3). SEPA believes that the water abstraction licensing system proposed in the Directive is a good thing. Controls are only required where the environment is at risk, and actions to address environmental damage have to take into account wider social considerations such as economic and social development.

1. Agreement was reached on the Water Framework Directive between the European Commission and the Parliament on 28 June 2000. Once ratified, it becomes the responsibility of members states to transpose the Directive into their own legislation and to implement it. In Scotland, it will be for the Scottish Executive to take this process forward.
   
   
2. The 1999 SEPA Report "Improving Scotland's Water Environment" identifies 'diffuse pollution' as an increasingly important source of polluted rivers and lochs in Scotland. This is pollution which does not come from a single source such as the end of a pipe, but rather from more widespread sources like run-off from agriculture, forestry or roads. Rainfall washes contaminants from the land, into burns, rivers and lochs. This sort of pollution is difficult to regulate. Diffuse pollution is responsible for about 26% of polluted rivers and 80% of polluted lochs in Scotland. The Report can be accessed on the SEPA Website.
   
   
3. The SEPA Report also highlights water abstraction as a problem. SEPA has long advocated selective abstractions controls, over those water abstractions which cause environmental damage. This selective approach will protect benefit the environment and all water users. Illustrations of some of the problems caused by uncontrolled water abstractions are:
   

• Increasing abstraction of water from the Dumfries groundwaters has lowered the water table threatening a valuable drinking water resource and resulting in the drying out of rivers.
  
• It is estimated that there are approximately 1000 hydro-energy off-takes in Scotland which transfer water out of catchments to a generating station. Many of these off-takes remove all the water during low river flows.
  
• During dry summers, irrigation is virtually essential for potato growers in eastern Scotland. A combination of recent dry summers and the requirement for a high quality product has lead to widespread pressure on the water resources of small east coast burns leading in some circumstances to the removal of all the river water.
  
• Most Scottish drinking water is derived from lochs or reservoirs. The management of the flow from the reservoir can have significant impacts upon river ecology downstream. Examples include rapid changes from high to lows flows in the River Leven downstream of the Loch Lomond barrage which leads to the stranding of migratory salmonid fish and their spawning beds.