1. The Department must classify a surface water body designated as heavily modified or artificial as—N.I.
(a)“good ecological potential” if the following conditions are met:
(i)all applicable mitigation measures have been taken; and
(ii)the values of all the indicators of the quality elements not sensitive to hydromorphological pressures related to the heavily modified or artificial water body designation, including biology, specific pollutants and other physicochemical quality elements achieve the standards for “high” or “good”.
(b)“moderate ecological potential” if the following conditions are met:
(i)not all applicable mitigation measures have been taken and the values of one or more of the indicators of the quality elements not sensitive to hydromorphological pressures directly related to the heavily modified or artificial water body designation, including biology, specific pollutants and other physicochemical quality elements achieve the standards for “high”, “good” or “moderate”; or
(ii)all applicable mitigation measures have been taken and the values of one or more of the indicators of the quality elements not sensitive to hydromorphological pressures directly related to the heavily modified or artificial water body designation, including biology, specific pollutants and other physicochemical quality elements achieve the standards for “moderate”.
(c)“poor ecological potential” if the values of one or more of the indicators of the biological quality elements not sensitive to hydromorphological pressures directly related to the heavily modified or artificial water body designation achieve the standards for “poor”.
(d)“bad ecological potential” if the values of one or more of the indicators of biological quality elements not sensitive to hydromorphological pressures directly related to the heavily modified or artificial water body designation achieve the standards for “bad”.