Staff of the Shannon Regional Fisheries Board was last night assessing damage wrought by the largest fish-kill in Ireland this year. Effluent was discharged into a stream in Co Offaly which feeds into the Shannon.
The count of dead fish was approaching the 2,000 mark last night, mainly young brown trout. "It's a lovely stream, mainly a spawning area," said Mr Matt Nolan, the regional fisheries board development inspector. "It takes a very large discharge of effluent indeed to do damage like this," he said.
"I honestly thought that by now people were very conscious of silage effluent and the potential damage that it poses for the environment, for our lakes and rivers."
The stream, known as the Pallas River, flows through Tipperary and Offaly and is a tributary of the Little Brosna River which flows through Birr and enters the Shannon downstream from Banagher.
This type of serious fish-kill was now relatively rare, said Mr Nolan. He appealed for people engaged in agriculture to be extremely careful in disposing of silage. The problem was exacerbated by the fact that this is the "high silage-making season" and with the lower water levels of summer the risk of further fish-kills is very real.
"Spread it, don't let it into the watercourse," the fisheries inspector warned. The water quality in Ireland has been deteriorating every year for the past two decades, he added: "If we keep going on like this, we won't have any trout or salmon left in our rivers and lakes."
It seemed unlikely that the source of the effluent would be easily traced. "This is not something that just happened today," said Mr Nolan as he urged the farming community to be vigilant and ensure that their waste management facilities were functioning properly.
Last month, serious fish-kills were reported at a river near Westport in Co Mayo and in the River Triogue, near Mountmellick, Co Laois.
The Westport fish-kill followed the release of almost 80,000 gallons of slurry into the Carrowbeg River, south-east of Westport, when the wall of a concrete tank collapsed.
The incident happened less than 10 miles upstream of Knappabeg Lake, one of Mayo's prime fishing areas. The slurry reached the lake and killed hundreds of trout and gudgeon.