Our Water Quality Policy is 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 requires the general management of rivers, lakes, estuarine and coastal waters to be at least 'good' under the adopted classification schemes with no downward movement between classes.
For groundwater (underground water) quality only two classes - good / poor - are defined, with the objective being to achieve good chemical status for all designated groundwaters. Surface waters and groundwaters in NI are monitored by the Freshwater Monitoring and Assessment and the Marine Monitoring and Assessment sections of our Water Management Unit (WMU), to determine their quality and to assess their compliance with the above requirements.
Our Monitoring Strategy report on its proposals for monitoring the aquatic environment and meeting the monitoring requirements of the EC Water Framework Directive can be viewed below.
Aquatic Monitoring Strategy 2006-2007 and Water Framework Directive Monitoring Plans (.PDF 1.2Mb)