The Three Rivers Project - water quality monitoring and management systems in the Boyne, Liffey and Suir Catchments in Ireland

Abstract

The "Three Rivers Project" is a government initiative and one of a series of catchment based water quality monitoring and management systems being developed throughout Ireland since 1997. The establishment of these multi-sectoral, basin-wide and community based systems is a response to historically perceived disjointed, legalistic and non-participative approaches to water resource management and purports to transcend the restrictions of traditional local authority administrative boundaries. The new management model embodies the concepts and objectives contained in the European Union (EU) Water Framework Directive (WFD) enacted in December 2000. Ireland, in common with many EU countries, has failed to halt decades of increasing levels of eutrophication of surface waters due principally to phosphorus loading. The "Three Rivers Project" is promoting the benefits of an integrated and cooperative approach to the management of three important river systems in Ireland, namely, the Boyne, Liffey and Suir. The project objective is to protect and improve water quality to conform with "good ecological status". The implications of the Project findings for agricultural, municipal and industrial policy are grave and one of the greatest challenges now is to organise and fund Irish River Basin Management Systems as envisaged by the WFD to continue and build on the work which the "Three Rivers Project" has undertaken.

Patterns and processes of phosphorus transfer from Irish grassland soils to rivers—integration of laboratory and catchment studies

“…While the extent of freshwater eutrophication in Ireland is not as great as in other countries, there has, nevertheless, been a decline in water quality over several decades (Earle, 2003;Foy et al, 2003). One of the principle causes of rural P transfer to freshwater is agriculture and, specifically, P losses from agricultural soils and direct losses from farmyards.…”

“…This is of significance as the requirement for river basin authorities to assess, monitor and manage river water quality at the catchment scale will often involve mitigation measures at smaller scales in order to meet the objectives of the European Union Water Framework Directive (Earle, 2003). Outside the terms of reference of this study was a more explicit investigation of the process between soil P mobilisation at the plot scale and P delivery to first order streams.…”

Dynamics of suspended sediment flux on the rivers bandon and owenabue, ireland

“…Furthermore, European studies have identifi ed Ireland as having a paucity of sediment and sediment associated pollutant concentration data [6]. While traditionally Irish waters have been relatively pristine compared with typical European conditions, a decline in water quality has occurred over recent decades [7], a trend, which has continued through to the most recent water quality assessment in 2011 where approximately 30% of Irish rivers were classifi ed as being polluted [8]. Over the past 10 years, signifi cant work has been undertaken in assessing nutrient losses from Irish catchments to rivers, but this work has not yet included comprehensive analysis of sediment associated nutrient inputs, has concentrated on nutrient loss from land and has been undertaken on small scale catchments [9,10].…”

A comparison of SWAT, HSPF and SHETRAN/GOPC for modelling phosphorus export from three catchments in Ireland

“…The introduction of the Water Framework Directive in Europe (EEC, 2000) required Member States to review water quality problems in all their water bodies. In Ireland, riverine and lake eutrophication due to diffuse pollution has been identified as a major problem (Earle, 2003) and phosphorus (P) is the limiting nutrient controlling eutrophication in inland waters (McGarrigle et al, 2002). Therefore an effective way to tackle eutrophication is to control P inputs, both from point and diffuse sources.…”