On Thursday last, Inland Fisheries Ireland (IFI) received a report of a fish kill on Ballycorrigan stream and near the confluence with the River Shannon in Ballina, County Tipperary.
Staff observed approximately 100 brown trout of various age groups, three juvenile salmon and a stone loach dead in an approximately 100 metre stretch from the Ballina Waste Water Treatment Plant discharge pipe to the confluence with the River Shannon. There are live fish upstream of the WWTP.
Preliminary investigations have indicated that maintenance works carried out during the day in the Ballina WWTP may have caused a deleterious or polluting effluent to discharge to this stretch of river causing the observed fish mortality.
IFI, in a statement on Monday (today), confirmed it is continuing to investigate the cause of the fish mortality and are working with Irish Water and the EPA in this regard.
A native of Ennis, Colin McGann has been editor of The Clare Champion since August 2020. Former editor of The Clare People, he is a journalism and communications graduate of Dublin Institute of Technology.