A 102-page report into a pollution incident that killed 32,000 salmon and brown trout in the River Blackwater in Cork has found no identifiable cause of the fish kill.\u00a0<\/p>\n
An inter-agency group, including the Environmental Protection Agency, Inland Fisheries Ireland, Cork County Council and other agencies, has released a final report on what is believed to be Ireland’s largest recorded single fish kill.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Despite extensive investigations, the group could find no evidence of a link between the fish kill and an identifiable pollution incident, or a specific environmental exposure, or waterborne irritant.<\/p>\n
There was also no evidence of a chronic problem with water quality before or after the fish kill, or any evidence of a systemic disease in the dead fish.<\/p>\n
The inter-agency group suspect a waterborne agent had a likely entered the River Blackwater around August 5 or 6, and that the first dead fish were found 72 hours later.<\/p>\n
The report said the pollutant dissipated quickly, rendering it undetectable in water samples and fish tissue samples.<\/p>\n
There was no evidence that protected species, such as otter or freshwater pearl mussels, were impacted.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The expert group said it is likely that a short-term pollution event caused the fish kill, but this has not been traced to any industrial, commercial, or agricultural operation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As part of the probe, the EPA investigated industrial facilities, wastewater treatment plants and drinking water plants but it could establish no causal link between these activities and the fish kill.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Separate investigations of light industrial sites and agricultural operations also found no causal link.<\/p>\n
The fish kill had had a serious impact on local fish stocks, with some estimates that it could take 10 years to recover.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 102-page report into a pollution incident that killed 32,000 salmon and brown trout in the River Blackwater…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87976,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[269],"tags":[1201,18,440,19,17,5,1202,133],"class_list":{"0":"post-87975","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-court-and-crime","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-politics-and-analysis","15":"tag-science"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87975\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}