Dairygold fined €12k over fish kill

Dairygold in East Cork was fined €12,000 and ordered to pay legal costs after it killed 20,000 fish by accidentally letting 150 litres of toxic insecticide run into a river.

At Midleton District Court, Judge Brian Sheridan described the fish kill as “an oversight of catastrophic effect” and said he wondered “if the penalties match the offence, but that is not a matter for me”.

The fish kill took place as grain was being transferred from one Dairygold Agribusiness silo to another at the Mogeely site on Aug 11 last. As it was transferred, the grain was sprayed with insecticide.

However, the worker who was in charge of the transfer process was distracted and left the site. Before he left, he stopped the grain transfer but forgot to turn off the insecticide spray and so it continued, running into a sump, a drain, and eventually into the River Kiltha where it killed 20,000 fish.

Patricia O’Connor, senior environmental officer with Inland Fisheries Ireland, visited the area the next day to analyse the water and fish samples after a call from a member of the public.

Twenty-four hours later, she received a phonecall from milling and grain operations manager Tony Mannix, who said they “had a mishap” at the grain depot.

At first IFI estimated that 3,000 juvenile salmon, trout, and lampray eel had been killed but a fish population study revealed that the figure was closer to 20,000.

The insecticide would have required 50,000 dilutions, she said, “to bring it down to a safe level”. The same product is used on fish farms to kill sea lice but at much smaller concentrations.

The Marine Institute examined the fish samples for IFI and confirmed their death was connected to the discharge from the Dairygold plant. An EPA study also confirmed that not all aquatic insect life on the river had been affected by the pollution, only that which was susceptible. The insecticide is not harmful to humans and can be sprayed on crops just before they are harvested.

Inland Fisheries Ireland said that Dairygold Agribusiness have been “extremely co-operative” in the nine months since.

Deborah Spence, solicitor for Dairygold, said the accident was “very serious” and the company was very sorry it happened and had taken “every step to ensure that it didn’t happen again”.

Dairygold confirmed it has since blocked off the drain. An engineering company was hired to develop a new grain transfer process whereby a motion sensor ensures that if grain flow stops, insecticide spraying automatically stops.

Dairygold was convicted of three charges under the 1959 Fisheries Consolidation Act and the Local Water Pollution Act. The fine imposed was the maximum possible under the legislation.

Judge Sheridan said: “To their credit, Dairygold acted accordingly when it happened but it is to their discredit that it happened.” He also questioned whether such an accident could occur on sites running similar operations and using similar processes.