Water pollution - Figures show a real advance

THE be-alert appeal by Inland Fisheries Ireland (IFI) issued to farmers yesterday was a pretty standard piece of red-flag waving but one of the details contained in the plea is worthy of qualified celebration.

IFI recorded 31 fish kills across the country last year and said that just eight of those were caused by farming. Even if it requires a leap of faith to accept that there were so few or that more rigorous, better resourced policing might not lead to a different set of figures, it is, in the context of the devastation wreaked by farming just a few decades ago, a huge advance.

Agriculture remains the largest avoidable factor in fish kills but the fact that IFI recorded only two fish kills because of municipal works, and a barely credible one because industrial works, suggest that a second leap of faith is required if these figures are to be accepted as comprehensive. It may be that these figures concentrate on single, catastrophic spillages, but as anyone who takes an interest in these things knows, the long-term, cumulative impact of persistent pollution and habitat destruction are the primary issues.

The farm sector is to be congratulated and encouraged to do more to minimise its impact on our natural world. The same challenge faces municipal authorities whose good intentions may be stymied by our head-in-the-sand refusal to accept that water is a precious, finite resource that we are obliged to protect, even if that means paying water charges.