The Water Environment (Water Framework Directive) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2017. The Water (Amendment) (Northern Ireland) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 ensures that the Water Framework Directive (WFD) (as transposed) and the various supporting pieces of water legislation are implemented in Northern Ireland. The legislation defines 6 year cycles of monitoring and action to improve or maintain environmental water quality standards.Water bodies are the basic management units for monitoring, reporting and assessing compliance with the Water Environment Regulations' environmental objectives. For the 2nd cycle (2016-2021) 571 water bodies were identified in Northern Ireland, of these 496 are surface water bodies: including 450 rivers, 21 lakes, and 25 transitional and coastal waters (Marine); the remaining 75 are groundwater bodies.This layer displays the river waterbody boundaries based on surface water flow hydrological units. This is a 2016 2nd cycle revision of the earlier 2009 1st cycle hydrological unit split. Future revisions are not planned.