BYMICHAEL BRESLIN
Fermanagh District Council has given a resounding 'No' to proposals to levy an abstraction fee on people sinking a borehole or a well on their land.
This week, members voted unanimously to write to the Department, outlining their objections to the levy which was provided in a consultation paper, The Water Abstraction and Impoundment (Licensing) Regulations (NI) 2006 which the Council received at the end of March this year.
It landed on the table of Robert Forde, the Council's Director of Environmental Health who then tabled the proposals for a subsequent meeting of the Committee.
Mr Forde told the 'Herald' that, depending on the amount of water being abstracted, there was a sliding fee scale, less then 10 cubic metres per day, 10-20 cubic metres, 20-plus metres and, in the case of a large dairy farm, 100 cubic metres.
He went on: "There is a flat fee of £135 for all applications for a licence, and £30 to have a licence modified. It is proposed to introduce annual charges in respect of a licence to abstract 100 cubic metres per day from 1st April, 2009.
"It's more farmers would be in that category, but there would be people involved in using water for coolant activities, say cheese factories. The general feeling of the Councillors was if you had a well on your land, you should be able to use it."
Not even a landowner who has a river running through their land is exempt from the proposed levy, should they abstract water from it. There would be controls on that, and all manner of means of abstraction would be controlled.
"If you take their definition of 'abstraction', it covers anything whereby water is removed from the an underground stratum by pumping, piping or diverting the water into a reservoir, or by sinking a borehole or well", Mr Forde added.
In writing to the Department the Council expressed their belief that charging for water abstraction is a 'rural tax' which will have a significant impact on many industrial and commercial businesses, particularly the farming community.
The further stressed that it is in the public interest to conserve water, to reduce the amount and subsequent cost of water treatment, and said measures such as those proposed would discourage farmers from using their own wells, thus increasing demands on Northern Ireland water.
A spokesperson for the Ulster Farmers Union explained this is an additional financial burden for farmers. He said: "We have been working on this for a several years and have always argued it is an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy coming from Brussels, given that water supplies in Northern Ireland are so abundant.
"It is part of the European Union Water Framework Directive, this aspect of it would be much more relevant to other parts of Europe where water is in scare supply. Never the less, unfortunately this European Directive is upon us, and we have spent a good period of time trying to make sure the cost of it and the impact in terms of red tape is minimised to farmers," he continued.
"But it is a directive and therefore depending on the circumstances some farmers are required to register and for some people who are taking out more than a certain amount of water there is a cost involved.
"We have worked out a 'Ready Reckoner' with the Environment Agency here to help farmers estimate how much water they are abstracting.
"Information is available on www.ehsni.gov.uk/agriculture_ready_reckoner.pdf.
"If farmers go to that they will find information to help them work out how many gallons of water per day they are abstracting.
"A basic rule of thumb is anyone abstracting more than 22,000 gallons per day of water is required to register.
"There is a registration fee and an annual fee thereafter. It really is more red tape and cost to the farmer but we have been stuck with the task of trying to keep that to the minimum."
