The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has said it expanded its investigation into the cause of the serious fish kill on the Blackwater River near Mallow in County Cork over the past ten days.
This followed the findings of a fish pathology study by the Marine Institute indicating that a waterborne irritant was likely to have caused or contributed to the fish mortalities, and that exposure may have occurred in the days before 12 August.
The expanded investigation includes discharges from EPA-regulated sites that may have occurred over a wider date range in the Blackwater Catchment.
It includes the following EPA regulated facilities in the Blackwater catchment:
- Ten licensed industrial sites
- Seventeen wastewater discharges (eight of which hold wastewater discharge licences and nine which hold certificates of authorisation)
- Two drinking water plants that use chemicals for coagulation and flocculation
As part of the expanded investigation, the EPA is continuing to carry out further inspections, including an assessment of monitoring data on regulated facilities in this area.
A number of licensed sites were not in compliance with certain licence conditions during the period, which are the subject of separate enforcement actions.
The EPA said that to date it has not identified a causal link between discharges from the EPA-regulated facilities and the fish kill.
The EPA became aware of reports of the fish kill in the River Blackwater and the River Clyda around the Mallow area of Co Cork on 12 August.
It immediately deployed three teams of inspectors to investigate whether industrial sites it licensed by the EPA, as well as wastewater treatment plants and drinking water plants around Mallow and Kanturk, may have contributed to the serious incident.
Inspectors checked conditions on the ground and took effluent and water samples. No spills were detected on any site inspected.
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Wastewater from creamery could not have caused fish kill - EPA
It comes as the EPA said it does not believe anything in the wastewater from the North Cork Co-Op creamery could have caused the large fish kill on the River Blackwater in Co Cork three weeks ago.
The agency has conducted eight official site visits to the creamery in Kanturk since the middle of June this year.
It has issued 22 official non-compliance notices to the creamery during that period, more than half of which relate to wastewater discharges into the river.
Anger over the issue among local anglers from Kanturk to Mallow, and way beyond, is palpable.
However, nobody yet knows who or what was responsible.
They estimate that more than 40,000 fish were killed by an environmental irritant that entered the water.
Inland Fisheries Ireland is coordinating a multi-agency investigation, including the EPA, to find who or what was responsible and hold them to account.
A scientific report by the Marine Institute which examined the dead fish confirmed that the gills and eyes of the fish had been horrendously damaged by whatever the irritant was.
The gills were so badly injured that opportunistic fungal organisms had begun to take root even before the fish died.
Anglers are deeply suspicious that an industrial plant or business of some sort is responsible for whatever entered the water.
The North Cork Co-Op creamery in Kanturk is one of the industrial operators in the spotlight.
However, all other businesses who discharged into the river are being examined too.
Last Friday, the results of an EPA site visit to its premises, triggered by the fish kill, were published on the Inland Fisheries Ireland website.
It raised serious concerns over the wastewater being released directly into the Blackwater River by the creamery.
Shockingly, it highlights that 362,000 litres of wastewater, with ammonia levels 30 times above the legal limit, and orthophosphate levels two-and-a-half times above the limit, was emptied into the river during a ten-hour period on the night of the fish kill.
Ammonia levels were 52 times over the limit in another wastewater sample that was tested at the time.
Although there is no doubt that this site visit report heightened suspicions, nowhere in the report does it say that any of this caused the fish kill.
North Cork Co-Op welcomed the EPA report that it does not believe wastewater from its creamery could have caused the fish kill.
It said it is committed to environmental protection and sustainability throughout its operations and continues to engage with the EPA.
On Saturday, the day after this site report was published, North Cork Co-Op issued a statement stating firmly that its creamery did not cause the fish kill on 12 August.
It claimed the incident started 10km away downstream in the area of Lombardstown, and that normal river and fish activity continued at the location in the river where it spewed out its foul wastewater.
The statement said it is essential to ensure accountability that is based on evidence, not assumption, and made reference to unfair damage being done to its reputation.
"There is nothing at any level of concentration or content in the wastewater effluent outflow from North Cork Creameries that could possibly have caused the appalling levels of injury and death to fish," it said.
The EPA agrees with the Co-Op.
It has confirmed to RTÉ News that it does not believe the bad wastewater coming from the creamery in Kanturk could have caused the extent and type of damage suffered by the fish.
The EPA does not believe that the North Cork Co-Op is responsible for this fish kill.
However, it will be up to Inland Fisheries Ireland to bring all the agency reports together and make the final determination about that.
The Co-Op was on the EPA's National Priority Sites List from 2022 right up until the first quarter of this year. This is the official EPA list of the worst industrial and waste sites for enforcement.
Now, because of a fish kill the EPA believes it did not cause, the Co-Op has been caught in a breach of its environmental licences again.
RTÉ has confirmed that the EPA has conducted eight site visits to its creamery in Kanturk since 24 June following a serious wastewater discharge event that occurred back then.
In that short period, the EPA has issued 22 non-compliance notices to the Co-Op including 13 related to breaches of emissions limit values.
Read more:
Tests find firm near Cork fish kill site exceeded discharge limits
Underwater animal samples to be collected after fish kill in Cork
Fish kill could be over 46,000, say Cork fishing parties
The Co-Op said in its statement on Saturday that it is "totally committed to environmental protection and sustainability on every level and have made and are continuing to make major investments in this area".
"We engage with the EPA proactively and co-operatively, both in compliance with our licensing requirements and in line with our commitment to environmental sustainability throughout the entirety of our operations and we will continue to do so at all times," it added.
Many anglers in the area are very skeptical about that claim.
Throughout the period since the middle of June, two local anglers, PJ Cremin and Ragnar Cherrie, have spent hours recording video and photographic evidence of very unpleasant, odorous, and discoloured outflows spewing out of the creamery's wastewater pipe directly into the river. Some of their videos and photos are shocking.
Mr Cremin said the EPA test results came as a shock to him.
"We felt that we had to take a rather drastic and public approach, and it opened our eyes to what's going on around the country.
"There’s no salmon, there’s no trout. There will be no otters. We saw an otter and two kits going through a backwash of that wastewater outlet pipe. They were swimming through scum, floating in the water, crawling out with it coating their bodies.
Watch: Cork anglers worried over fish kill
"Two weeks later, we saw an otter and one kit. After that, we didn't see the otter. And after that, this thing happened - the big fish kill," he said.
Dozens of dead wild brown trout laid out on grass
Mr Cherrie referred to the test showing ammonia levels in the wastewater discharge was 52 times higher than it should be.
"We're not saying this is directly connected to the Blackwater River fish kill. But they both run into one river.
"We could do with getting some results of what's caused the kill, the root cause and where it came from.
"At this stage it has gone right down the Blackwater, wiped out various people's fisheries and livelihoods. People run B&Bs on the back of fishing.
"Fishery owners and managers and angling groups have all lost out. We just feel the results are a bit vague at the moment," he said.
Another local angler Connor Arnold, Chairman of the Killavullen Angler club, which on the Blackwater River, explained that there are a number of industrial operators with EPA license facilities in the area but that the results of the testing of their facilities were not published.
"We are still looking to find out if they were tested, and if so, what are the results.
"Because, as it stands, the seriousness of the situation is such that it could happen tomorrow morning in any other river in the country. The procedures that were observed are just nowhere near good enough. They are too slow.
"It took too long to get test results. All the procedures took too long. There was no health warning. The seriousness of the situation - we cannot allow it to be replicated anywhere else in the country."
