Inshore fishermen are calling on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to investigate why stocks of shellfish have declined and seaweed has stopped growing in parts of the Waterford estuary.
As The Times Ireland edition reports today, the National Inshore Fishermen’s Association (NIFA) is also appealing to the EPA to refuse a revised discharge license application sought by a gas-powered plant at Great Island, near Campile, Co Wexford, on the confluence of the Suir and Barrow river estuaries.
NIFA, which was established in 2017 to represent some 200 commercial inshore boats of less than 12 metres in length, works closely with the National Inshore Fishermen’s Organisation (NIFO), which also opposes the license application.
NIFA general secretary Alex Crowley says that the Waterford estuary supports important inshore fisheries for shrimp, whelk, lobster, velvet and green crab, and there is also pelagic trawling for sprat and herring and dredging for various bivalve species.
The estuary is close to an “important spawning ground for a number of commercially important species including Celtic Sea herring”, the organisations state.
Crowley says that local fishermen have noticed how shrimp, whelk and velvet crab stocks have recorded a “noticeable decline”.
The fishermen claim that there has been “significant die off” of bivalve shellfish species, and seaweed no longer grows in the intertidal zone for “some miles” downstream of the plant’s current outfall pipe.
SSE Generation’s 464MW natural gas-fired combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) power plant dates from 2015, replacing the former oil-fired station run by the ESB.
All large combustion plants are now required to renew their emissions licence under the EU’s Industrial Emissions Directive, and SSE’s application for a licence review is part of this process, the company says.
The company describes the plant as “one of the cleanest and most-efficient power stations on the island of Ireland, generating enough electricity to power half a million Irish homes”.
It says it works with the EPA on an ongoing basis to ensure it is compliant with its licence conditions at all times.
However, NIFA is concerned that the EPA learned last September that some 1300 tonnes of chemicals were being discharged into the estuary under a license covering just five tonnes.
NIFA is specifically concerned with the use of chlorine, in the form of sodium hypochlorite, which is added to cooling water at intake to prevent fouling of pipes within the power station.
The EPA said it had investigated the allegations and found SSE to be “compliant with the license limits on the concentration of chlorine in discharged water”.
The EPA said it found no evidence that SEE’s discharge was having “such an effect on shellfish and fish mortality”, and said there was “insufficient evidence to conclude which individual pressures, if any, are contributing to impacts on marine life in the estuary”.
The EPA said the submission by NIFA would be considered as part of the revised license application under the relevant legislation
Read The Times here