Mayo river pollution is highlighted

COMMUNITY NOTES: BALLYHAUNIS - WESTERN PEOPLE (MAY 12 EDITION)

Pollution remains an issue for the local Dalgan River, judging by the results of a recent testing of the waterway by a citizen science group organised by Ballyhaunis Tidy Towns.

“We surveyed two sites: the Friary Grounds and Drimbaune, south of Ballyhaunis… Both sites showed a score of “moderately polluted”, with a significant reduction in numbers of invertebrates and species in the downstream site.

“The Friary Grounds had a lot more ‘good’ as well as ‘bad’ indicators for water quality, while the river at Drimbaune was just poor in both indicators. We also encountered a crayfish and two fish, possibly brown trout.”

Using the presence or absence of key river creatures to score the quality of the river water - some creatures being more tolerant of low-oxygen, polluted waters - the citizen science group was trained by the Local Authority Waters Programme (LAWPRO), a service shared by county councils across Ireland to reverse the degradation of Ireland’s rivers and lakes.

The River Dalgan, which flows southwards from Ballyhaunis and on to join the Clare and Corrib rivers in Galway, has in recent years suffered from an increase in pollutants from agricultural and wastewater sources.