The Standards and Conditions that will be required to meet Good Ecological Status (GES) are an essential part of the Water Framework Directive (WFD). We welcome the effort that has been put into developing these standards, and recognise the difficulties in developing new environmental standards from scratch across the UK, and before the full results of the intercalibration exercise are published. Despite this, we have some concerns over the draft proposals for the phase 2 standards and conditions. Some of these concerns are general in nature, and some relate to specific standards, such as turbidity and temperature. Our major concern in relation to the UK TAG process is that scientific objectivity has been compromised by considerations of expediency, achievability, or the continuation of the status quo. We hope that our comments can be considered in drawing up the final standards.
A joint response from Wildlife and Countryside Link, Scottish Environment LINK, Northern Ireland Environment Link and Wales Environment Link