A medical consultant and angler has said Ireland has an urgent need for one river authority in the light of the latest devastating fish kill on the river Blackwater.
Writing in The Journal, Prof Rónán Collins says one river authority should have as “its first principle the recognition that rivers are the arteries of our country, bringing their waters of life, biodiversity and wellbeing”.
“They are the waters on which we all depend, the sculptors of our ever-changing landscape and the ‘Wild Atlantic Way’ opportunity for many of our inland towns through angling, nature tourism and recreation,” he says.
Prof Collins is a consultant geriatrician, angler, and council member of the Royal College of Physicians and Clinical lead for stroke. He is a board member of Salmon Watch Ireland.
Angling clubs estimate that nearly 50,000 fish died in the recent incident first report on August 9th on the river Blackwater – and suspected as a chemical spill.
“We cannot just let this fish kill slip by like all the others, with shrugged shoulders, inadequate explanation, or ‘hands-up’ admissions with no meaningful actions. A river has been denuded of its dignity and stripped of its life, demeaning us all who love our waters,” Prof Collins says.
“There are multiple state agencies with responsibilities that are often conflicting and competing that have an interest in our rivers: ESB, OPW, Inland Fisheries Ireland, Uisce Ireland, and Environmental Protection Agency, to mention a handful,”he writes.
“We seem to have a legacy view of rivers merely as flood threats and sewer conduits for effluent, be it farm, human or industrial; extraction sources of water or energy; recreational playgrounds for ourselves or our pets; watering holes for our cattle; or poaching opportunities for the lucrative illegal wild salmon trade. We rarely see them as the wondrous geographical jewels, highways of biodiversity or the hydrological wonders that they are,”he says.
“When ‘threatened’ we seek to divert, culvert and concrete our urban river courses rather than addressing the cause of floods, the human damage to their upper catchments or floodplains. Great examples of modernist concrete ‘Ars Destructiva’ can be seen in the urban river courses through our west Cork towns of Skibbereen, Clonakilty and Bandon,”he says.
“We extract water at increasing rates to address our various needs, with more planned in the proposed 'Great Shannon Water Robbery' to feed the thirsty capital and its data centres, rather than addressing drinking water wastage through leaks, unscrupulous or excessive use, inadequate rain harvesting and recycling,” he writes.
“Large water extractions damage the flow and nature of a river’s sculpting hand, affecting our landscape, its wildlife, and creating the sluggish breeding cesspits for algae, fungi and bacteria in our increasingly arid summers that may well be responsible for this latest natural outrage. All the while we fertilise such toxic suffocating blooms with the nitrogenous run-off of our farms, our urban sewage effluent and the discharges of creameries and factories. All legally licensed and all the more appalling for that,” he says.
Read his full article in The Journal here
