We have our own problems of pollution, much of it attributed to an overdose of fertiliser being washed into rivers and lakes, sometimes to slurry - often to slurry, perhaps. But we are not alone. There is an amazing statistic on the subject in a French fishing and hunting magazine. "Heavy Pollution of Rivers in Brittany", the heading, is something of an understatement. The article runs as follows: It is in summer and particularly in the month of August, when the rivers are at their lowest, that pollution coming from animal rearing makes itself most felt in the rivers of Brittany. In about 7 per cent of the national territory, there are concentrated 3 million cattle, but more significantly 15 million pigs and more than 100 million fowl from which the waste (to put it politely, and because the word used in French, dejections, isn't in the dictionary to hand) represents every day 200,000 cubic metres, which according to the article, is the equivalent of that from a population of 40 million humans. (Can they be right? France's population all told is about 60 million.)
Anyway, the short article goes on to say that, profiting from the Mad Cow disease scare and an infatuation on the part of consumers with pigmeat and poultry, the industrial farmers of Brittany have in the past few years gone more and more for concentration of effort, to the detriment of the quality of the product and at the same time the quality of the environment. Fishermen and farmers are often in dispute about water quality, but these figures, if 100 per cent accurate, make our own waters seem as pure as a crystal well. Short, because there's nothing more to say. We will await the next issue of the magazine concerned.
The Meath Chronicle tells its readers that a pollution early warning system is to be introduced for the Boyne and Liffey systems. And the monitoring/management will be developed along with substantial investment in sewage treatment infrastructure in the catchments concerned. There will be more about this. And did someone say: "about time"? Y