#FishFarm - No council permission was given for a pipeline laid last month to extract water from Loughaunore to a nearby salmon farm in Kilkieran Bay in Co Galway, as the Connemara Journal reports.
Marine Harvest Ireland installed the 3.25km pipeline to help treat an outbreak of amoebic gill disease among its farmed salmon, but did so before a decision was made by Galway County Council over an exemption for the project from the usual planning permission requirements.
It's also claimed by Irish Water that despite a claim in Marine Harvest Ireland's Section 5 application that it has an 'agreement' with the new water metering body, no such agreement exists.
While extraction of potentially millions of litres of water from the lake has paused for now, local campaigners argue that the situation is typical of problems connected with fish farming - the subject of much controversy in the county since the furore over the planned large-scale organic salmon farm for the Aran Islands.
The Connemara Journal has much more on the story HERE.