Water quality and the NIEA

Our Water Quality Policy aims to maintain or improve the quality of surface and underground waters in Northern Ireland as required by European Commission (EC) directives, national policy and international agreements.

It also involves the management of rivers, lakes, estuarine and coastal waters , which aims to achieve a minimum standard of  'good' under the classification schemes that have been adopted.

For groundwater (underground water) quality only two standards - good / poor - have been adopted.It is the NIEA's policy to ensure that it achieves a standard of 'good' for all our designated groundwaters.

Surface waters and groundwaters in Northern Ireland are monitored by the Freshwater Monitoring and Assessment and the Marine Monitoring and Assessment sections of our Water Management Unit (WMU) to make sure that they comply with current standards and regulations.

Our Monitoring Strategy report, which contains our proposals for monitoring the aquatic environment and complying with the EC Water Framework Directive, can be viewd below.

Aquatic Monitoring Strategy 2006-2007 and Water Framework Directive Monitoring Plans (.PDF 1.2Mb)