Northern Irish and County Derry rivers fail to meet good overall status

A new study by the Rivers Trust has revealed that Northern Irish rivers fail to meet 'good' overall status. This also applies to the rivers in County Derry. 
The comprehensive analysis of the health of the river is divided into four categories that are ecological, biological, physio- chemical and chemical status.
According to the general results of the study on the rivers of Northern Ireland almost ‘70 per cent failed to meet the requirements for good ecological status,’ says the study.
On the biological status side, ‘47 percent of river stretches failed to reach good biological status’.
‘53 percent were given good or high general Physico-Chemical status, which looks at conditions that affect life in the river, such as temperature and nutrient composition’.
All rivers in Northern Ireland were given a moderate chemical status with none of them reaching high status. This includes the study of the presence of plastic (PBT’s) in the water and mercury in plants and animals.
In County Derry, data for multiple rivers is available.
For example, River Bann from the sea to Lough Neagh has been classified as being in Moderate ecological health in 2022.
In 2022, half of the Moyola River was classified as being in good ecological health while the northern part of the same river was given a moderate ecological health status.
River Roe, from Limavady to Dungiven, has been classified as having poor ecological health.
However, Mark Horton, Director of The Rivers Trust All-Ireland and Chief Executive Officer of Ballinderry Rivers Trust in County Derry said to still be optimistic about the future of Northern Irish rivers as a lot is due to human actions.
“This report is an alarm bell to every local community, citizen, politician, landowner, and our business community that we need to take collective action now if we want to improve and protect this vital freshwater resource that we all depend on and avert a
deepening environmental and ecological crisis.
“Despite the dire current state of our rivers, I remain optimistic because, as this report shows, almost all the pressures negatively impacting our rivers, loughs and groundwater are caused by human activities and it is therefore within our gift to
reverse some of these impacts.”
According to the study, agriculture and land management appear to be the major factor in nutrient pollution with nearly 300 rivers studied in Northern Ireland.
Then comes sewage, urban run-off and industrial activity. 

The wee bogs under the stones, a sign of health

“The Northern Ireland Environment Agency goes out on a regular basis. And it will be looking at the wee bogs under the stones and that's what they refer to as a biological assessment,” said Mark Horton.
“They're looking at the macroinvertebrates, so the really small insects that live under the water and some of those bogs are more sensitive to pollution than others. By knowing the range of how sensitive they are, by their presence or absence, we can tell how clean or dirty that water is. You can score it.
“Then the second thing they will do is chemical assessment. They'll go in, take a water sample, and then they'll measure things like phosphate, ammonia, suspended sediment, dissolved oxygen, and they're all indicators of how clean or dirty that water is. Then that data gets processed by the department and then it gets reported.”
Mark explained that the study of the Rivers Trust is not new information as they gathered existing studies to better understand the river’s states.
“The state authorities, no matter which country you're in, are having to gather this information as part of Water Framework Directive reporting. Although we are now outside of the EU, we're still continuing with that monitoring protocol,” said Mark.
The Rivers Trust was able to gather the data after asking the department for their most up-to-date data.
This initiative to create a report on the river's states started three years ago according to Mark. However, he explained one of the main challenges was to gather the data between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland as it is not recorded the same way.
“About three years ago, the Rivers Trust produced its first state of the rivers report. At that time, it only included England and what they were doing was gathering all the information that was already available, but was maybe in different places. 
“They did bring it all together in one kind of interactive report that people could understand and explore the information and then we said that we need to extend that out. So this iteration of it included Northern Ireland and Ireland.
“That kind of brought its own challenges because we don't record data in the same way in Northern Ireland and Ireland. So very often when you look at a map of rivers there's either a big gap where Northern Ireland should be if it's Irish data, or it's the other way around. Northern Ireland, not the rest of Ireland.”
“Of course, the rivers don't stop at the border, they flow across the border,” said Mark.
“We tried to get that information into a format that you can see the bigger picture for the whole island of Ireland,” explained Mark.

Lough Neagh 

The study also takes a close look at the situation of Lough Neagh and Mark said that “it is a catastrophe.”
“There's just simply too much nutrients getting into our waterways. And there's a lot of kind of blame at the minute you know, there's a lot of fingers being pointed. People are saying it's the farmers and it's the water treatment plants but the truth is, it's all of those things, all of them.
“I've heard people saying that they need to do something about this. And I keep saying, No, we need to do something about this.
Everybody has a role to play,” said Mark.
“Of course, the farmer has a role to play and they need to be tested in their soil and understand how much fertiliser they need in order to get their grass to grow the required amount. If you put too much fertiliser on, it doesn't make the grass grow more. It just sits there in the soil, gets washed away into rivers and then enters Lough Neagh."
However, Mark also emphasised the need for everybody who is not attached to the main sewer network and has a septic tank to check if it is cleaned and if it is functioning well.
For more information and to access the full report, visit the Rivers Trust website.