Farmers are being urged to protect waterways as the silage and land spreading season gets underway.
The appeal comes from the Local Authority Waters Programme and LAWPRO’s Farming for Water European Innovation Partnership.
As water levels are low due to the current spell of hot weather, it is vitally important to ensure that streams, rivers, or lakes are protected.
Farmers, in a bid to ensure that silage effluent, manure, fertilisers, and soiled water do not contaminate water sources, are told to take precautionary measures.
This means maintaining silage pits and slurry storage facilities to ensure leaks and overflows do not occur and ensuring that farm effluent and slurry is only spread in a responsible manner, when heavy rain is not forecast or close to a water course as per the Good Agricultural Practice Guidelines from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine.
The Farming for Water EIP project is available in priority catchments across the country where water quality is not meeting its targets. For more information on the project visit: www.farmingforwater.ie
