3. INTRODUCTION
The Water Framework Directive ( WFD) was introduced in Scotland by the Water Environment and Water Services Act (Scotland) 2003. The principal mechanism for delivering improvements to the water environment and ensuring sustainable water use will be the river basin management planning process. This process will rely on the use of environmental standards and conditions to help us assess risks to the ecological quality of our water environment and to identify the scale of improvements which would be needed to bring those waters not in good condition back to good health.
In addition to the introduction of specific standards and conditions, we need a mechanism for assessing and describing where the water environment is of good quality and where it may require improvement. Classification systems provide such a mechanism for describing the state of our aquatic environment and for assessing the effectiveness of our programme of measures in achieving environmental objectives established through the river basin management plans.
This consultation describes the proposed classification schemes and how they will be applied as part of the river basin management planning process. These proposals are based on recommendations made by UKTAG1 for classifying surface waters, groundwaters, surface water bodies designated as heavily modified or artificial, and for assessing protected areas. They include proposals for:
- How SEPA should use for the purposes of classification the environmental standards and condition limits to be set out in the 2008 Ministerial Directions 2;
- How spatial considerations should be taken into account;
- How SEPA should carry out an assessment of its confidence in the classification results; and
- How the results of the classification exercise should be presented and reported.
We expect the application of the classification schemes to provide us with our most comprehensive understanding of the status of Scotland's water environment.
Further information on the UKTAG recommendations can be found at: