Galway County Council has pleaded guilty to causing two pollution incidents last summer in which hundreds of fish were killed. The incidents happened on the Clarin River near Athenry, after the council's sewage processing facilities malfunctioned.
The council was fined €1000 by the Athenry District Court, which also awarded costs against them for the first incident in July.
The Western Regional Fisheries Board, using fisheries protection legislation, brought the prosecutions against the council.
The Fisheries Board claimed that raw sewage from a pumping station flowed into the river on 19 July last year, reducing oxygen levels to just 14%. Following the incident, oxygen deprivation led to the death of fish in the river.
The second incident on 26 July was due to the failure of Athenry's main sewage treatment plant to cope with the town’s sewage.
Imelda Tierney, solicitor for Galway County Council, said the causes of the pollution had been addressed, and money had been allocated by the Department of the Environment for a new facility to be built by 2009. She said that in the interim the Council was carrying out modifications to the plant.
Judge Aeneas McCarthy recorded the facts of the second incident of pollution as proven, but adjourned the case until 10 October.
