The Kilkenny Anglers Association says it will initiate legal action by the end of the month unless the Office of Public Works (OPW) agrees to implement measures to prevent the further destruction of fish stocks on the river Nore.
The association claims that engineering works two years ago on the Lacken weir, during an ongoing €48 million project to alleviate the risk of flooding in Kilkenny city, are hampering the passage of migrating fish, especially spawning salmon, with "disastrous consequences".
Tomorrow is the deadline for submissions into an OPW review of problems at the weir; the OPW has invited interested parties to submit proposed solutions.
The initial cost of the Kilkenny flood relief project was estimated at €13 million but this has risen to more than €48 million. The OPW says it has talked to the consulting engineers for the scheme and the contractors to ensure that the cost of work on the weir in 2005, and further work expected to be done this summer, will not be borne by the State.
An OPW spokesman says it expects to receive "a significant number of submissions" to its review by close of business tomorrow and will hold a public information day when options have been developed.
Since the end of 2004, there have been reports that salmon swimming upstream were unable to clear the Lacken weir which had been re-engineered and heightened during the flood relief project.
The Kilkenny association and other angling clubs on the Nore claim that a fish pass, designed by the Department of the Marine to assist the passage of fish over the weir, is "totally unsuitable" and results in salmon either dying before spawning or being forced to spawn in adverse conditions.
The OPW accepts there is a problem, but told an Oireachtas joint committee in January that it was far from "a crisis or ecological disaster".
However it has admitted that the fish pass, known as a "denil pass", was built using inaccurate data supplied by consultants.
It says the fault was corrected during a series of remedial measures carried out on the weir in 2005, but further work still needs to be done.
The OPW also told the Oireachtas joint committee that video evidence taken just before Christmas proved that the fish pass was working and that the vast majority of salmon were successfully passing the weir.
The anglers association, which says it also has extensive photographic and video evidence, rejects this and says that on one day in January, its members counted 1,000 fish unsuccessfully attempting to leap the weir, and none were going through the denil pass. They want this fish pass, described as resembling "a cattle-crush", removed and replaced with a more traditional "rock ramp" pass.
The association has commissioned and paid for its own research from a marine consultant to support its case and claims that up to 25 per cent of spawning stock is being lost, which would not have happened if the OPW had consulted local people.