High Level Summary of Statistics Trend Last update: Wednesday, September 21, 2011
River Water Quality
Low standards of river water quality may threaten the aquatic environment, drinking water quality and recreational water use. Sewage, industry, urban development and agriculture are some of the factors that may affect river water quality.
The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) has established an indicator of river water quality based on a network of sites covering 253 water bodies (rivers, or sections of rivers), which account for approximately 10% of all water bodies. The indicator is based on a consistent set of five water quality parameters which are sensitive to organic pollution, nutrients and toxic substances and provide a measure of species diversity. Each of the parameters is assessed over a rolling 3 year period and the results weighted by river length.
The assessment is against the standards provided for each parameter in the Water Framework Directive classification. (Only parameters available over the whole period are included in the indicator; thus it is not possible to equate these results with those using the latest classification based on all the parameters in the Water Framework Directive.)
In this indicator, river water quality is classified as unpolluted, unimpacted by pollution, slightly polluted, polluted, or severely polluted . Between 1992 and 2010, the proportion of river length for which river quality could not be calculated fell from 10.4% to 0%. Most of these water bodies were subsequently classed as unpolluted or unimpacted by pollution.
Between 1992 and 2010, the proportion of river length that was classed as slightly polluted, polluted or severely polluted in Scotland rose from 6.4% in 1992, to 7.9% in 1998, before falling to 2.7% in 2010. The main drivers of slightly polluted, polluted and severely polluted rivers are inputs of nutrients, leading to degraded biological and nutrient quality.
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Source: Scottish Environment Protection Agency
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