The UK is heading for the European Court of Justice after failing to adequately treat wastewater discharged from its cities and towns.
The European Commission is to refer the UK to the European Court of Justice for failure to adequately treat the wastewater discharged from 13 cities and towns of more than 15,000 inhabitants.
The EU Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive states that that urban centres across the EU should have met minimum standards for wastewater collection and treatment by December 2000.
And to do so, the law requires that European states put in place waste water collection systems and secondary, biological, treatment systems to meet those standards.
Since the UK failed to act, the European Commission sent the country a written warning in July 2004, followed by a second one in December 2004. However, collection systems and the secondary treatment are still not in place for the 13 cities and towns, most of them in Northern Ireland.
In addition, the situation in Northern Ireland risks being exacerbated by a decision to allow substantial new development to go ahead in some of the areas where no appropriate wastewater treatment is in place.
The towns in Northern Ireland are: Bangor, Carrickfergus, Coleraine, Londonderry, Larne, Newtownabbey, Omagh, Portrush and Donaghdee.
The remaining four towns are Broadstairs, Margate and Brighton in England and Lerwick in Scotland.
