The newly-released 2024 Northern Ireland Water Classification Statistics Report says that the presence of ubiquitous, persistent, bioaccumulative, toxic (uPBT) substances in Northern Ireland's surface waters means that none of its rivers, lakes, transitional and coastal water bodies will meet good chemical status.

The report has been published by the Northern Ireland Environment Agency and Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs has published The statistical report contains updated water body status (classification) for Northern Ireland river, lake and transitional and coastal bodies predominantly based on monitoring data covering the period 2018 to 2023 inclusive.

Since 2018, the presence of ubiquitous, persistent, bioaccumulative, toxic (uPBT) substances have been assessed as part of chemical status. However, biota samples are only collected at selected surface water monitoring stations and not across the entire network. Due to their bioaccumulative and persistent nature, uPBT substances have been detected at all monitored stations and resulted in failures of all of those stations.

The Agency said it is recognised that uPBT substances would cause more failures if additional stations were monitored. For this reason, the uPBT failures have been extrapolated to all surface water bodies across Northern Ireland, meaning that none of its rivers, lakes, transitional and coastal water bodies will meet good chemical status.

Since the inclusion of uPBT substances and the extrapolation of the related failures to all water bodies, no surface water body can achieve better than moderate overall surface water status by default (when ecological and chemical status are combined).

This means overall surface water status no longer provides detailed information at river basin district or water body level. The report primarily compares ecological and chemical status of surface water bodies to different time periods for both Northern Ireland and river basin districts.

Key findings include:

• River Ecological Status - In 2024, 131 (29%) of the 450 river water bodies were classified as good or high ecological status. This figure includes 2 river water bodies classified as high.
• Lake Ecological Status - In 2024, 5 (24%) of the 21 lake water bodies were classified as good ecological status. No lake water bodies were classified as high ecological status.
• Transitional & Coastal Ecological Status - In 2024, 10 (40%) water bodies achieved good ecological status. No transitional or coastal water body achieved high ecological status.
• River Chemical Status - In 2024, when excluding uPBT substances but including cypermethrin failures, 383 (85%) river water bodies achieved good chemical status.
• Lake Chemical Status - In 2024, when excluding uPBT substances but including cypermethrin failures, 11 (52%) lake water bodies achieved good chemical status.
• Transitional & Coastal Chemical Status - In 2024, when excluding uPBT substances but including cypermethrin failures, 2 (8%) achieved good chemical status and 23 (92%) failed to achieve good chemical status.

The report also provides information on chemical status results when both uPBT substances and cypermethrin are excluded and also when both are included. Tables and charts provide results by River Basin Districts. For completeness, overall status classification for all water bodies is provided in the report annex.

The report is an update on the status of surface water body types: rivers, lakes and transitional & coastal. Due to a long lag time, groundwater body classifications are not updated mid-cycle. The 2021 groundwater body status, which is included the Northern Ireland Water Framework Statistics report 2021 remains current.

A public webinar event discussing the latest results has been organised for Friday, 7 March from 12:30 to 13:30pm – click here to register for the upcoming NI Water Classification Statistics Webinar.

Click here to download the full report