Significant Water Management Issues Report for Scotland River Basin District

A response by the Freshwater Taskforce of the Scottish Environment LINK to the SEPA Significant Water Management Issues report for Scotland RBD.

We are generally content with the progress that has been achieved with the identification of the most widespread water management issues and appreciate the efforts of the SWMI team has made in getting the document this far. However, we do have a number of comments which we hope will improve the document still further. These relate to:

• What is ‘significant’ and the relationship between SWMIs and the first RBMP
• Issues relating to climate change
• Agricultural and forestry land drainage impacts on ecological status
• The effectiveness of some existing measures
• Further measures to deal with diffuse pollution from agriculture, morphological impacts and the use of new technologies
• Restoration of the water environment