Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether her department monitors the impact of highway runoff on rivers and lakes.

The Environment Agency (EA) has a monitoring regime that sets out to identify pressures on rivers and lakes as well as estuaries and coasts and groundwaters. This involves monitoring (of water quality, chemicals and ecology) to determine reasons for not achieving good ecological or chemical status. This includes understanding the risk posed by the category ‘Urban and transport’, which road runoff is a key component of.

Monitoring undertaken is not designed to specifically monitor the impact of highway runoff on rivers and lakes. The EA is working with National Highways under the Department for Transport, to evolve its monitoring strategy that is to be focused on highways outfalls, where highway runoff enters watercourses.