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Visualising Ireland’s Water Framework Directive Status

Catchments.ie makes use of EPA Water Framework Directive structured data to publish information about water quality in Ireland. This experimental visualisation allows you to interact with some of this data.

This visualisation contains high level information for all 4,829 waterbodies in Ireland. To get started, you can decide how to shade the individual waterbodies – we suggest starting with Shade by ‘Status 2013-2018’ as this is the most up to date status information. You can then choose how to group and compare the waterbodies, for example you can Group by ‘Waterbody Type’ and then Compare ‘Region’ or any other attribute.

You can also hover over any of the points representing a waterbody and see the some information about that waterbody.

If you come up with any interesting visualsiations we’d love for you to share them on Twitter and tag @EPAcatchments so we can see them.

About author

EPA Catchments Unit

Administrator

The EPA Catchments Unit is based in Dublin, and the team is involved with catchment science, chemistry, ecology, hydromorphology, modelling, Geographic Information Systems and planning. We work with the wider EPA, all of our local authorities, the Local Authority Waters and Communities Office, the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government, and other public bodies and Departments to ensure we have the best available data and information about our catchments.

Who is involved?
Quite simply, everyone in Ireland has a role to play. This can be from something as simple as making sure you don’t pollute your local stream, or a local community working together to establish a Rivers Trust to enhance the rivers and lakes in their area, to a Government Department or Agency helping a Minister implement a new policy to help protect and enhance all our water bodies.

This website has been developed and is maintained by the Environmental Protection Agency, and is a collaboration between the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Local Authority Waters Programme.

Local Authority Waters Programme

The Local Authority Waters Programme coordinates the efforts of local authorities and other public bodies in the implementation of the River Basin Management Plan, and supports local community and stakeholder involvement in managing our natural waters, for everyone’s benefit.

Environmental Protection Agency

The EPA is responsible for coordinating the monitoring, assessment and reporting on the status of our 4,842 water bodies, looking at trends and changes, determining which waterbodies are at risk and what could be causing this, and drafting environmental objectives for each.

Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage

The Department is responsible for making sure that the right policies, regulations and resources are in place to implement the Water Framework Directive, and developing a River Basin Management Plan and Programme of Measures to protect and restore our waters.