The Water Framework Directive
November 16, 2009
Last week was a shorter one, as I took off Friday to treat myself to a long weekend in Pembrokeshire with my family. Such luxury will be in short supply for the rest of the year as I have just about exhausted my leave and the extra hours I have built up from the summer. It was a very wet and long drive down, and a very wet and long weekend! There were floods abound in Pembrokeshire and much of south west Wales. When I lived there every other winter would be like that, but now it is a seemingly more common occurrence, and one looks at Climate Change as a potential cause. In terms of fisheries this is a major threat, work by Aberdeen University several years ago explored the effects of winter spates, their sizes and impacts on salmon and trout redds by monitoring artificial redds. The exact figures escape my memory but they were scary, quite common spate levels would wash out redds to a large degree. So as I looked over the bridges of my child hood in Pembs and saw the waters lapping the tops of the arches - I feared for the sea trout redds that will have already been laid and wondered whether it was similar in the my new home of Ribble Valley. It certainly made me want to reduce my carbon foot print!
Monday last week was the standard office day, going through correspondence and working on paper work, data analysis and preparing for the week ahead. I normal brief with Philip took place and we planned out our “strategy” for a Water Framework Directive (WFD) meeting the next day. Late on in the day Stephen and I headed down to the bottom length of Mearly Brook, we found one potential trout redd, but it was hard to be conclusive. We were encouraged by how clear the brook was running, and to see little sewage litter, hopefully indicating that despite the very high water of the previous week the controlled storm overflow was not used.
Tuesday Philip and I headed to Lancaster University where with 3 other trusts from the North West, Natural England, and the Environment Agency we looked at delivery of projects to aid the EA in delivering the UK’s(specifically the North West) promise on achieving good ecological status (GES) by it’s deadline. We went through several interesting presentation from the EA and NE and then sat down in our respective catchments to go through the works/issues. The WFD both excites and despairs me. The opportunities to get works done, the pressure the government is under to provide resources to get the work done and most importantly what this means for our rivers gets me into a state of heady excitement – ready to take on the whole catchment at once! Then I am brought back down by the paperwork & bureaucracy, poor ambition (not locally by EA, NE or us I would like to say!), and the failure to report the status of becks correctly. Many of the becks are in classifications that are too good. This makes them low priority and hard to get projects done to rectify them. I will stop now on this subject before I pull the soap box out and depress myself. We will however with the local teams, seek to rectify this and get the work that is needed done. In fact we already have 5 projects in the wings ready for submission to the EA this month!! On top of the 14 other projects we are doing next year!
Wednesday was a nice change of pace and I helped Stephen install the Trout in the Classroom tank into Edisford School. The kids were already excited by the prospect of trout, and we didn’t even have the eggs yet! Things went swimmingly and I hope that shortly there will be things swimming in that tank!
Thursday we received delivery of Malcolm Greenhalgh’s Book on the Ribble River & Valley. This is a great book on the history, fishing and countryside of the Ribble Valley. It is something that will be cherished by all who have an interest and love of this fantastic place. All the royalties of this book are going to the Ribble Catchment Conservation Trust and the Hodder Consultative. We will be selling them out of the office or anywhere we might be visiting. They are also available from several outlets in the Ribble Valley. It is an ideal Christmas present! More details will be available on the website soon and fliers soon to be distributed.
The rest of the day was a good old get on with my 2009 report and also prepare my report for the AGM on the 23 of November here at the office. So with the end of another week I am amazed as to how quickly this year is going, just 5 weeks to the festive season, and then it’s a new year!
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