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36 news articles

Stock photo - Algal bloom on the Rive Corrib, Galway, Ireland.

Nearly half of Irish Rivers are polluted by nitrogen — EPA

  • Rebecca Duncan
Almost half of Ireland’s rivers have unsatisfactory water quality levels and there was a decline in water quality in 230 rivers recorded in 2020. Nitrogen and phosphorus from agriculture and urban wastewater discharges continue to be the most significant pressures on surface and groundwaters in Ireland, causing a decline in water quality. 

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Silt and soil polluted river

Water and Sewerage Company Environmental Performance Report: Winning slowly is the same as losing

  • Rebecca Duncan
The Environment Agency published its Environmental Performance Report for water and sewerage companies today, assessing nine water companies’ progress against a set of environmental targets from 2016 to 2020. This report shows that the water sector has been moving generally in the right direction over the last 5 years — we see for the first time 5 out of 9 of the Water Companies receiving 4 stars for environmental performance — but progress overall is still too slow and persistent laggards are not responding to public and regulatory pressure.

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Stills PPP7

Earth Day: A little plastic goes a long way

  • Rebecca Duncan
As part of our Preventing Plastic Pollution Project, we’ve launched a new animation ​“A little plastic goes a long way” to demonstrate the journey of plastic waste from source to sea. The video shows a plastic bottle, dropped by a riverbed on a mountainside, which travels all the way down to the seashore.

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Bury River Roach

Sewage update: 2020 spill data added to our map

  • Rebecca Duncan

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Bury River Roach

Measures to reduce harm from sewage pollution to be made law

  • Emily Cooper

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Light nature sky water 133682 1 1

Blog from Mark Lloyd: It will take more than Water Companies to clean up our overflowing sewers, we need nature too

  • Emily Cooper
There are many sources of pollution that blight our rivers: farm slurry; soil from compacted, over-grazed and tilled fields; industrial effluent; pesticides and road run off.

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