Figure 5 The relative importance of freshwater issues from questionnaire responses
4.4.
What has been difficult to progress? “People’s perceptions: farming is benign and sewage is nasty. There is a social and political mismatch between this and the genuine impact on the environment” Anonymous
Diffuse pollution, both urban and rural, was the issue most frequently cited in the interviews as having been difficult to gain progress on. It was felt that progress had been made on the “low hanging fruit” of point source pollution, with the diffuse issues remaining more difficult to gain any significant traction on. Diffuse issues are difficult to resolve due to the multiple stakeholders involved, the fact that it is so widespread, that it is poorly regulated, there is a paucity of enforcement resources for what regulation does exist and governance is unclear. In comparison point source pollution generally has fewer, and more easily identifiable sources and stakeholders and therefore it has been somewhat easier to regulate. The impacts of diffuse agricultural pollution (nutrients and sediments) are relatively well known, so standards and targets for their reduction can be set. There is a paucity of evidence on the impacts of other pollutants, principally micropollutants (PFOS, microplastics, metals, herbicides, anti-microbial resistant pathogens etc), which makes them particularly difficult to progress. In fact, one respondent stated it was difficult to accurately assess the relative risk of agricultural nutrient and sediment pollution compared to micropollutants (PFOS, microplastics, metals, herbicides, antimicrobial resistant pathogens etc) because of the lack of evidence of the impact of micropollutants on freshwaters. In the case of chemical pollutants, two respondents (one from a water company and 18
