Cork fish kill: No culprit for the worst environmental disaster in Ireland this century
A 102-page, multi-agency report on the atrocity that killed at least 32,000 salmon or brown trout at the River Blackwater in early August failed to identify the source of the fish kill. Photo: Facebook/Conor Arnold
As the sun begins to fade in the west on Tuesday, the Oireachtas Committee on Climate, Environment and Energy will assemble in CR3 in Leinster House. This evening’s objective for the nine-person committee is to “engage with witnesses on the fish kill in the Blackwater River in Cork”.
That catastrophe, along with the Lough Neagh’s death throes, is the greatest environmental disaster to befall this island this century - so far at least. The committee and its guests will discuss what seems the perfect crime.
A 102-page, multi-agency report on the atrocity that killed at least 32,000 salmon or brown trout in early August failed to identify the source of the fish kill. Neither could it identify the substance that caused carnage along a 20-mile stretch of the river, which, not so very long ago, was an Irish Eden, one of those gifts from nature almost beyond our capacity to absorb.
Just like one of Raymond Chandler’s crime mysteries there was no smoking gun or at least one the investigators from the Environmental Protection Agency, Inland Fisheries Ireland, the Marine Institute, Cork County Council and other watchdogs could find once they overcame early deflecting but entirely misleading suggestions from Inland Fisheries Ireland that the fish kill might have been caused by a natural force.
The gumshoes were late as well as a day late and a dollar short, as Chandler might have sighed.
The politicians, under the chairmanship of Dublin Bay North’s Naoise Ó Muiri of Fine Gael, are one of the parties arm-twisting in Brussels to try to convince a Europe disenchanted by our environmental record to extend the disastrous nitrates derogation.
This wrong-side-of-history campaign continues despite an EPA report two weeks ago that the nitrate levels in our compromised waterways had risen by 16% in the first six months of this year. Those politicians, professionally risk adverse and aware of the bullying of the farm and food lobby, will grill 11 representatives of agencies including IFI, EPA, the Marine Institute and Cork County Council - Official Ireland meets Official Ireland.
The committee may in time invite some NGOs fighting on these issues if only to assuage those who believe that some State agencies are part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
That scepticism would not have weakened last week, when the Aquaculture Licences Appeals Board ruled to allow Mowi Ireland to “continue aquaculture operations … at a site East of Deenish Island, in Ballinskelligs Bay”. This ruling came at the end of an investigation opened in 2019 after a salmon farm at the site dramatically exceeded production limits.
Neither will the move, trumpeted by Fine Gael last week, to allow farmers increase slurry storage capacity without the bother of going through the planning process like everyone else.
According to agriculture minister and beef farmer Martin Heydon, “these planning exemptions will introduce … a threshold for stand-alone slurry storage facilities and increase the threshold for animal housing by 50% … while continuing to protect water quality and … ensuring that our nitrates derogation can be maintained.”
Though not directly linked to the Blackwater disaster these developments highlight an unsustainable culture and show the huge challenge faced by those trying to protect our life-giving water resources and our quickly disappearing salmon populations.
One of those organisations is Salmon Watch Ireland, a cross-community group that has demanded accountability on the kill and the unsuccessful investigation. They also warn that unless we take decisive action, salmon and trout populations, our waterways and drinking water too, will remain under a dark shadow.
The principal recommendation from SWI is that the agencies charged with protecting our natural world work as one. It seems at least bizarre, and so convenient if you are a rogue operator, that these agencies do not work better together to resolve the crisis of the day.
They also recommend a far quicker response to fish kills than seen last month. To help that they call for enhanced monitoring and increased seasonal sampling in high-risk catchments. Incredibly, in a country with 7.1 million cows and all that implies, SWI have had to call for an Irish laboratory with capacity for broad-spectrum pollutant analysis.
SWI highlight Kanturk-based North Cork Creameries’ (NCC) persistent serious pollution incidents. NCC had a turnover of €66.3m by processing over 300 million litres of milk in 2024.
Around the time of the fish kill an outflow from NCC showed that ammonia levels were 52 times the level set in their EPA licence. The EPA said the creamery is not the source of whatever killed thousands of Blackwater fish.
“The Blackwater disaster is a warning that Ireland can no longer tolerate chronic polluters,” said SWI. “Persistent licence breaches must be met with the strongest enforcement tools available — including more effective court sanctions and licence withdrawal.”
Reflecting that belated embrace of the realities of our world, the EPA warned last week that NCC may lose its licence unless it resolves "very serious matters" around wastewater discharges.
"The watchdog, routinely excoriated by the farm/food sector, said that licence breaches in the June to August period were primarily due to a lack of management, control, and operational expertise on wastewater discharges."
It records that the plant in Kanturk was the subject of significant environmental enforcement before the fish kill. This included prosecutions, convictions and small fines in April this year.
This should not be tolerated in a business with the capacity to cause tremendous damage to our natural world. Especially as the EPA has continued to monitor the site and detected what it described as “serious and entirely unacceptable pollution discharges” between June and August.
In her 2014 book , Naomi Klein wrote that “our economy is at war with many forms of life on earth including human life. Only one of these set of rules can change, and it's not the laws of nature”.
Like the scientists who warned of climate collapse she was derided by the willfully ignorant. Time has shown that the only thing she and the climate advocates got wrong was timing. They underestimated the speed and velocity of climate changes to our world.
It would be wonderful if tonight’s Oireachtas meeting was a first stepping-stone towards a more realistic future where farm producers can make a decent living without destroying what’s left of our countryside. That requires the kind of cultural change that only comes at moments of crisis.
Science warns us that we are already at that moment. It seems well beyond time that we all caught up but, tragically, it is increasingly difficult to hope that we might.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
