The Local Authority Waters Programme
The Local Authority Waters Programme (LAWPRO) is a national shared service working on behalf of all 31 local authorities in Ireland. LAWPRO coordinate efforts to achieve good or high water quality in our rivers, lakes, transitional and coastal waters, and groundwater, as required by the European Union Water Framework Directive. Healthy rivers and catchments support a healthy environment, a robust economy, our health, and wellbeing.
Kilkenny and Tipperary County Council jointly manage LAWPRO across 13 separate local authority centres within a five-region structure:
- Border
- Midlands and East
- South East
- South West
- West
Mayo County Council host an office for the West Region. For more information on LAWPRO visit their website https://lawaters.ie/
The Mayo Blue Dots
LAWPRO collaborates with local communities through the Blue Dots Catchments Programme to protect and improve our high status objective waters so that the benefits to biodiversity, our health and wellbeing, our heritage and the climate can be enjoyed by current and future generations.
In May and August 2024, as part of Biodiversity and Heritage week respectively, LAWPRO launched a booklet and short video on the “Mayo Blue Dots”. Blue Dots are high status objective waterbodies and there are 48 of these in County Mayo. When achieving this target, they have the highest ecological quality of all our waters and often a greater diversity of species that are sensitive to pollution. To learn more about these, and see the amazing work being done around the county to protect and restore them, please check out the links below.
Visit: Blue Dot Programme - Local Authority Water Programme (lawaters.ie)
The video is on YouTube at the link below: