The latest attempt to arrest increasing river and lake pollution is set to fail, a prominent anglers' group has told the European Commission. An anti-pollution package announced by the Government has "serious practical difficulties which serve to make [new] regulations, as they stand, useless", according to the Carra-Mask Angling Federation.
The regulations are not binding on polluters, with a range of opt-out possibilities for farmers and local authorities, the federation says. There are no meaningful restrictions on phosphate fertiliser use which is enriching waters and fuelling eutrophication, often leading to algal blooms. In addition, it warns of "no commitment to funding".
Details of the report emerged as Department officials are due to meet representatives of the Commission's Environment Directorate-General in Brussels later today to outline attempts to curb water pollution in what are some of Europe's most important freshwater ecosystems.
In response to Commission concerns that not enough was being done to implement EU directives on water quality, a meeting was held in Dublin earlier this year.
The Irish Times understands the Commission still believes not enough is being done, while the threat of a European Court action against the Government remains. Against this background, it asked the Carra-Mask federation to submit its views on the latest package announced this summer.
The anglers have made formal complaints to the EU dating back to 1994 because of a failure to adopt pollution-reduction programmes "by setting binding water quality objectives for a range of pollutant substances, in particular phosphorus".
While the Government had for the first time acknowledged the full extent of the problem, the federation believes it is still not complying with directive 76/464 EEC, specifically a requirement to "not allow increased pollution of inland waters", according to anglers' spokesman Mr Tony Waldron.
There is not enough baseline information to give an accurate read on status of lakes and rivers, the report claims. The current status of such water systems is to become the status quo, with the principle that there be no further deterioration from this point.
The regulations do not take account of conditions prior to agricultural intensification and large increases in other "point" pollutant loads, such as discharges from sewage plants, factories and septic tanks, over the past 20 years.
"There is no provision to try and undo widespread damage caused by misguided agricultural policies in the 1970s and 1980s. This, combined with lack of knowledge on the trophic status [health] of many lakes - less than 1 per cent of Irish lakes have adequate seasonal sampling - means the objectives referred to in the regulations are an inadequate baseline for assessing improvement in water quality and in implementing the directive."
The scale of the problem is shown by the fact that there are up to 5,000 lakes in Ireland, with little or no information available on close to 99 per cent of them, it notes.
The Government is placing a lot of faith in nutrient management planning, whereby a local authority or farmer would calculate, for example, the potential impact of their activities on water and monitor water quality to ensure there is not an excessive loading being placed on a river or lake.
The federation says that bodies responsible for the achievement of water quality objectives have a range of opt-out procedures if they fail to reach those objectives. It doubts whether most local authorities have the ability and expertise required to achieve such objectives. A failure to impose an environmental tax on phosphate fertilisers is a serious omission given that phosphates arising from agriculture are widely believed to be the single biggest factor leading to eutrophication. To date, attempts at reducing phosphorus use have been voluntary, as in the REPS scheme designed to promote environment-friendly farming.
The federation says that while local authorities will be able to force farmers to have a nutrient management plan, there are no penalties attached to non-compliance. While water-pollution Acts are in place, this type of arrangement will lead to serious problems in bringing cases against farmers, it adds.
Farmers in sensitive catchments should have to show they are farming in an environmentally-friendly way. "Those who refuse to abide by this should not remain eligible for premia payment. We cannot accept that continued pollution should be financed to any degree by public money."
