Introduction to the Orkney and Shetland area management plan

Purpose

This plan aims to maintain and improve the ecological status of the rivers, lochs, estuaries, coastal waters and groundwater areas in Orkney and Shetland. It is a local action plan which supplements the River basin management plan for the Scotland river basin district, and will help to deliver Water Framework Directive requirements. It focuses on local actions for Orkney and Shetland and highlights the opportunities for partnership working to ensure that we all benefit from improvements to the water environment.

This plan will run from 2009 to 2015, when it will be reviewed and the next six year cycle of planning will begin.

What areas does this plan cover?

The plan has been produced in partnership with Area Advisory Groups in Orkney and Shetland. Although this single document covers both island areas, Orkney and Shetland have separate advisory group meetings, and have different pressures and priority issues. Separate text and statistics for Orkney and Shetland are used throughout this document to ensure that it is useful at a local level.

The Orkney and Shetland advisory group areas include all burns and lochs on Orkney and Shetland, plus wetlands, groundwater and coastal waters out to a nautical limit of three miles (see Map 1). In Orkney, the advisory group area includes settlements such as Kirkwall and Stromness, as well as international oil terminal facilities at Flotta. The Shetland Area Advisory Group includes the settlements of Lerwick, Scalloway, Brae and the Sullom Voe oil terminal.

In both Orkney and Shetland, many burns and lochs are too small for classification under the Water Framework Directive, which only considers river catchments of over 10 km² and lochs with surface areas greater than 0.5 km². Future work on small water bodies in both areas is planned so that they can be protected and enhanced as part of an integrated approach.

Water plays a significant role in the landscape of Orkney and Shetland. A clean water environment is important to key industries such as wildlife and heritage tourism, beef and dairy farming, fisheries, aquaculture, and production of hill lambs. In the last 30 years, the oil industry has formed a vital part of the economies of Orkney and Shetland, and has been carefully monitored and regulated. More recently, the development of wave and tidal renewable energy has grown in significance, with test sites in several coastal water areas.

Map 1: Orkney and Shetland advisory group area (showing main catchments) (click for larger image)

How to use the Orkney and Shetland area management plan

This plan is for the Orkney and Shetland Area Advisory Groups and:

anyone who manages or uses the water environment;
anyone who manages activities on land that interact with the water environment;
anyone who wants to know more about how our water environment is being protected.

This plan co-ordinates the delivery of the river basin management plan for the Scotland river basin district within the Orkney and Shetland advisory group area. To understand this national context, you may find it helpful to look at the Scotland river basin district plan. This plan, along with detailed information for individual water bodies and a web-based interactive map, is available on the SEPA website.

The plan has three key components.

Area management plan summary (this document) is an overview of the Orkney and Shetland advisory group areas including classification, objectives, key measures and an outline of the work plan for the advisory groups for the next year.
Catchment summaries provide information on classification, pressures, measures and objective for each catchment. Catchment summaries will be produced between July and September 2010, and will be updated and kept as live documents during this first river basin planning cycle.
Action plan with information about how the advisory group will work together to deliver the district plan and a record of where new actions are being developed. These will also be kept relevant as live documents during this first river basin planning cycle.

The plan has been produced in partnership with members of the Orkney and Shetland Area Advisory Groups. These groups are responsible for sharing the information in the plan with a wider range of stakeholders, to encourage them to implement the actions in the Orkney and Shetland advisory group areas. SEPA’s role in the development of the plan has been to provide information, particularly with regard to classification, and to co-ordinate information and input from others. In this document ‘we’ refers to all those involved in the production of this report – not just SEPA.

Wider forums could also be established to allow a wider group of stakeholders to be involved in planning developments, and engage with the public. Some initial events have been held, and it could be possible to develop this in partnership with existing environmental forums in Orkney and Shetland.