Annex 2
LETTER DATED 4 JULY 1991, FROM THE DEPARTMENT
OF THE ENVIRONMENT TO THE NATIONAL FARMERS' UNION
EC NITRATE DIRECTIVE
We briefly discussed the Nitrate Directive during
our meeting on 26 June. I was grateful for your kind words about
our success in negotiating changes to the Directive.
You wrote to me on 10 June. John Gummer and
I both welcomed the opportunity to discuss your concerns about
the Nitrate Directive before I went to the Environment Council.
I took very careful note of your concerns, and I made a point
of drawing other Member States' attention to the need for the
Nitrate Directive to strike a fair balance between improving water
quality and maintaining an efficient agriculture. I hope that
we will be able to involve the NFU in the work we must now undertake
to implement the Directive.
The original Commission proposal would have
forced Member States to introduce measures beyond fertiliser limits
and controls on manure with little discretion on what these further
measures should be. In effect it would have forced the introduction
of costly measures such as set aside without regard to the wider
consequences for the economy or social conditions.
The final text has been greatly changed in response
to the concerns of the UK and other States about this. The choice
of further measures is now at the discretion of the individual
Member State. If we needed them, we would have regard to their
cost, their effectiveness and the extent to which nitrate from
agricultural sources was likely to cause concern to human health,
harm to living resources and to aquatic ecosystems, damage to
amenities or interference with other legitimate uses of water.
That is exactly what the Directive requires.
Nothing in the Directive will affect the role
of the water industry in tackling the nitrate problem—indeed
the recently adopted Urban Waste Water Directive imposes fresh
obligations on the industry.
As you know, on surface water, with some difficulty,
I was able to get other Member States and the Commission to agree
that monitoring to assess compliance with the Nitrate Directive
would be at the same points as in the existing Surface Water Abstraction
Directive. This was a major improvement to the Directive and one
that allows us to limit the size of vulnerable zones. It provides
the opportunity to limit the effect of seasonal peaks in nitrate
concentration by allowing measurements to be made after blending
of water in reservoirs. We will press the water supply companies
to ensure that, so far as possible, the choice of monitoring points
properly reflects the wider requirements for the UK.
I was also able to negotiate a change to the
provision on manure limits. The limit in vulnerable zones may
now be 210kg N per hectare for each of the first four years, reducing
to an annual rate of 170kg N per hectare thereafter. However Member
States have scope to fix different amounts, on the basis of objective
criteria, for example, where soil has a high denitrification capacity
or crops have high nitrogen uptake. This additional flexibility
is a major achievement, and one that you particularly asked me
to seek.
You asked about the possibility of paying compensation
to farmers in vulnerable zones. I have discussed the position
with John Gummer. We are four years away from the announcement
of action programmes in vulnerable zones, and there is a further
four years to implement programmes. All that I can say now is
that the underlying Government policy for purposes of the pilot
national nitrate scheme was, as you know, that farmers should
not be compensated for complying with good agricultural practice,
but that they should be compensated for substantial restrictions
beyond good agricultural practice.
I am copying this letter to John Gummer.
David A Trippier MP
| 
