Clare County Council is preparing a new strategy for water quality monitoring which will start this month. The council will be liaising with Teagasc and other bodies in the coming weeks as research shows the quality of water is deteriorating, with fish stocks declining. Farmers, industrialists and householders will be targeted under a new programme.
According to the Shannon Regional Fisheries Board, eutrophication is a major cause of the decline in the quality of Clare waters. Algal blooms, which threaten other forms of life in the water, have become the norm in many of the county's lakes annually. According to environmental experts, if this continues and intensifies, the outlook for many lakes is poor.
Over 600 miles of rivers in the Mid-West region, which includes Cos Limerick, Clare and North Tipperary, are surveyed regularly by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Recent results show that 65 per cent of the rivers in the region are totally unpolluted, while a further 16 per cent are slightly polluted. Some 19 per cent of the waters surveyed were in the moderately to seriously-polluted category.
Industry, agriculture, domestic discharges with high phosphate, detergent loading and sewage discharges all contribute to the problem.