Anger in Cork over fish kills leads to calls for council to be given leading role protecting rivers

By Peter McCarthy, Corkman

A North Cork councillor has called on Cork County Council to take a bigger role in monitoring and protecting the river Blackwater in the wake of the fish kill that wiped out 50,000 fish last month.

“We are stewards of some of the most precious resources on this beautiful island of ours, our rivers, our lakes, our groundwater and the life they support. I absolutely believe it is time that Cork County Council takes a firm and leading role in defending them,” Cllr. Ronan Sheehan said at this week’s meeting of the local authority.

“We must not forget when the recent devastating fish kill occurred, there was no clear protocol in place. There was confusion, there was delay, there was no real-time data, no rapid response and certainly no clear leadership. We cannot allow this to happen again. This is about setting the standard. Let Cork be the county that leads and not the one that follows,” he said.

The Labour councillor for Kanturk-Mallow put forward a motion calling for a review of all current discharge licences in the county and for Cork’s discharge limits to be benchmarked against those of other local authorities.

“A full review of all Section 4 discharge licences is essential. If a river is already struggling and if fish and other life forms are dying, how can we justify continuing or renewing discharge permissions without serious scrutiny?” he asked.

Cllr. Sheehan called on the council to launch a pilot programme of real-time water quality monitoring on the Blackwater using a technology known as sondes. These are solar-powered devices that sit in the river and continuously measure water quality for parameters such as dissolved oxygen, temperature, nitrate levels, pH and turbidity.

“These sondes can collect data every few minutes and send it back in real time. A number of sondes strategically placed along the river could become a powerful model for smart, transparent water management,” he said.

Cllr. Bernard Moynihan seconded the motion and supported the sondes proposal. “The position is that we have a whole challenge at the moment with regard to the nitrates derogation. Our water quality is of vital importance to maintain our current derogation.”

“If we lose derogation, we all know the consequences, we lose €130m of investment into our county from a 25pc reduction in the herd of cows. We can be the leaders with regard to derogation, we also have to be the leaders with regard to water quality,” the Fianna Fáil councillor said.

The Chief Executive of Cork County Council, Moira Murrell, said that the sondes proposal can be raised with the inter-agency group established after the fish kill.

“We're always open to newer technologies. But we have to realise as well, we have roles and remits and we carry out those duties as Cork County Council. But there are also roles and responsibilities for larger discharges that require EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] licencing or they require different forms of monitoring,” she said.

“So we will and we do take leadership under the jurisdictions that we have and in the area where we have that jurisdiction. But I think we need to be clear about what our role and functions are as well.”

Council Divisional Manager Michael Lynch said that larger scale, high-risk industrial/commercial discharges are regulated by the EPA, while local authorities regulate those activities responsible for a lower risk discharge.

“I know that there's loads of agencies involved in everything, I'm asking us to be leaders. I'm asking us to grasp it the best way we can rather than depending on EPA and the IFI [Inland Fisheries Ireland],” Cllr Sheehan responded.