The line chart compares the proportion of rivers meeting good chemical standards in the UK over the period of 12 years.
Overall, the rivers located in Wales and Northern Ireland consistently had the cleanest water throughout the period shown. Meanwhile, the other regions’ proportion of having good river quality witnessed a fluctuation.
With regard to the two leading nations, around 95% of Wales’ rivers were categorized as meeting good quality, noticeably higher than those of Northern Ireland with about 83% in 1990. Over the nine following years, there were equivalent figures for these regions, merely 93%. While the percentage of rivers having good standards in Wales witnessed a steady drop by nearly 20% in the last year of the period, the figures for Northern Ireland reached its peak of around 100% before slightly decreasing to 95%.
Regarding the remaining countries, England accounted for 45% of good-quality rivers, which is more than double that of Scotland at the beginning of the period. In 1996, the former reached its peak of merely 70%, and then dropped to the lowest point of 30% in 1998 after witnessing the recovery to just 50% in 2002. Similarly, a steady increase in the percentage of clean rivers can be observed, increasing from30% in 1996 to 60% in 2000, followed by a drop by approximately 20% at the end of the period.