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The water environment and achieving the environmental improvements

This section summarises the condition of the water environment in the Clyde advisory group area, the improvements we plan to achieve and the key pressures and impacts that we need to address. Catchment level summaries of the condition of the water environment, the improvements we plan to achieve and the key pressures and impacts that we need to address are included in catchment profiles. The catchment profiles will be produced over the next 6 to 12 months and will be available on the website.  

Information on individual water bodies can be accessed through the web based interactive map on SEPA’s website at www.sepa.org.uk/water/river_basin_planning.aspx.

Information on the classification, objectives and measures for the Scotland river basin district, as well as detailed supplementary information on how we classify and how objectives have been set, can be found in the district plan.

The current condition of the water environment

The water environment includes all rivers, lochs, estuaries, coastal waters, artificial waters (such as canals and reservoirs) and groundwater. It also includes all the wetlands that depend on surface waters or groundwater for their water needs.

Classifying the condition of each water body provides a picture of where the water environment is in good condition and where improvements need to be made. SEPA has subdivided waters in the Clyde advisory group area into 322 surface water bodies (264 river and canal water bodies, 27 loch water bodies, 22 coastal and 9 estuarine water bodies) and 44 groundwater bodies in the Clyde area.

In general, the classification of surface water bodies describes by how much their condition (“status”), differs from near natural conditions. Water bodies in a near natural condition are at high status while those whose ecological quality been severely damaged are at bad status. The results show that we have a lot of work to do as the majority of water bodies are currently at less than good status. 44% of water bodies are in a good or better condition and almost a third are moderate status (see Table 2 and Maps 2a and 2b below):

In the Clyde area almost a quarter of our surface water bodies have been substantially changed in character for important social and economic purposes such as flood protection, hydropower generation, navigation, land drainage or water storage for drinking water supply. These are known as heavily modified water bodies. Another 3% of surface waters are artificial; most of these are the Forth and Clyde canal. The classification of heavily modified and artificial water bodies describes their ecological potential. This is a measure of the extent to which water bodies' ecological quality has been maximised, given the limits imposed by the physical modifications necessary for the bodies' uses.

The classification of bodies of groundwater describes whether or not they are polluted and whether or not the volume of any water being abstracted from them is sustainable without significant impacts on rivers or wetlands that depend on the groundwater. Unlike the five status classes applying to surface waters, two classes are used to describe the status of groundwater, good and poor.

Pressures and risks

A wide variety of impacts on the water environment has been identified. Key impacts that the Clyde advisory group have identified as of particular interest are:

• urban drainage;
• diffuse pollution from rural sources;
• managing the impacts from our industrial past.

This does not include all impacts and there are other issues that will also need to be addressed through river basin management planning. Recording the presence of invasive non native species and implementing the national work, outlined in the invasive non native species implantation plan, at a local level will be a key focus of the group. The impacts of abstraction from public water supply, for example, are also an issue that the Clyde area advisory group might undertake in the future. Detailed information on impacts in each catchment are included in the catchment profiles and in the water body information files, both available on SEPA’s website at www.sepa.org.uk/water/river_basin_planning.aspx.

SEPA has identified over 100 catchments in Scotland that are currently failing to meet environmental standards outlined in the Water Framework Directive. Fourteen diffuse pollution priority catchments, containing some of Scotland’s most important waters (for drinking bathing, conservation and fishing) have been selected using a risk based approach for action in the first river basin planning cycle. The rivers Ayr, Doon, Garnock and Irvine and North Ayrshire coastal burns are included in the first cycle.

Whilst focusing on these catchments for diffuse pollution the mitigation of other impacts on the water environment will be considered, such as changes to beds and banks, abstractions, flooding and invasive non native species.

1. Bodies of groundwater are classed as either of good status or poor status.