The National Rivers Authority (NRA) was one of the forerunners of the UK Environment Agency, existing between 1989 and 1996. Prior to 1989 the regulation of the aquatic environment had largely been carried out by the ten Regional Water Authorities (RWAs). The RWAs were responsible for the supply and distribution of drinking water, sewerage and sewage disposal, land drainage and flood risk management, fisheries, water quality management, pollution prevention, water resource management and many aspects of the management of aquatic ecology and some aspects of recreation. When the 10 Water Authorities in England and Wales were privatised by flotation on the stock market they took the water supply , sewerage and sewage dispsal activities into the privatised companies. The remaining duties remained with the newly created National Rivers Authority.

The assets and the staff of the RWAs were divided up at privatisation but all the assests relating to water supply reservoirs were tranfered to the RWAs, even in cases where there were strong recreational and fisheries interests in the reservoirs. Complex charging arrangements were also put in place whereby the newly created companies paid abstraction charges to the NRA for water removed from surface and ground waters but the NRA then had to pay to have such waters released into rivers. In circumstances where reservoirs had been built to control river flow and thus indepenedently support drinking water abstractions, this could entail the NRA paying out more to have the water released than it had charged for its abstraction. It also meant that some releases of water from reservoirs, which in the past had been made with ecological or recreational interests principally in mind, were now made with economic intersts as the principal driver.

The logo of the NRA was a stylised image of a Salmon in a circle of water, sometimes frivolously referred to be the staff of the NRA as the washing machine.

The Chair of the NRA throughout its existence was Lord Nicholas Crickhowell .