Save our rivers: Blackwater under pressure as the number of pristine tributaries has halved

From a disastrous Uisce Éireann leak to less obvious issues such as forestry runoff, the Blackwater catchment is under pressure, writes Ellie O’Byrne on the third day of our series on five Irish rivers

'The whole river wiped out, for 8km': On June 9, Tom Ankettell of Kanturk and District Trout Anglers learned that 2,500 litres of polyaluminium chloride leaked from an Uisce Éireann plant into the River Allow in Co Cork, one of the tributaries of the Munster Blackwater. Pictures: Larry Cummins

When Tom Ankettell got a call at 4pm on Sunday, June 9, nothing could have prepared him for the devastation he was going to witness.

Mr Ankettell, the chairman of the Kanturk and District Trout Anglers Association, received word from his local Inland Fisheries Ireland (IFI) representative that something was seriously amiss with the fish on the River Allow near his home in North Cork.