4. ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY STANDARDS AND ECOLOGICAL STATUS CLASSES
The ecological status of a surface water body describes the degree to which human uses of the water environment have adversely affected the structure and condition of the aquatic ecosystem it supports. Good ecological status means that human activities have had only slight impact on the ecological characteristics of the plant and animal communities that live in the water body. The UK is participating in a Europe-wide exercise to ensure that our methods for classifying the status of our water bodies give results that are consistent with the WFD's status definitions and comparable with those of other Member States.
To protect and improve the ecological status of surface water bodies, we need to identify, and set environmental standards for, the physical conditions on which the status of aquatic plants and animals rely. These physical conditions include the pattern of water flows; the condition of the bed and banks of water bodies; and the concentrations of pollutants in water.
For groundwater, the Directive requires us to consider the chemical make-up of the water body and the groundwater levels within it. We shall also be developing standards for these conditions.
SEPA and other regulators and responsible authorities will use these environmental standards to help work out, for example, how much water could be abstracted from the water environment, how much of a pollutant could be discharged and how much engineering work could be undertaken without significant risks to the health of the plants and animals that directly depend on the water environment. In turn this will tell them what would need to be done to prevent deterioration or to restore water bodies to good ecological status. Such information will be the starting point for the objective setting process.
To identify standards, the environment and conservation agencies from across the UK have collaborated on a major review of existing environmental standards. This review has been designed to identify standards that represent the environmental quality needed to protect aquatic ecosystems.
The review is the first of its kind and has involved many of the UK's leading independent experts in ecology, hydrology, geomorphology and chemistry. Monitoring results from thousands of sites across the UK and scientific literature from around the world has informed the process. It has provided us with the best ever assessment of the environmental standards needed to support healthy aquatic plant and animal communities.
The Executive has separately published its policy on the introduction of environmental standards and conditions, and that policy statement can be found at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/Recent