MORE than 20 million young fish from the Firth of Forth are being killed every year by Longannet power station, according to scientific surveys passed to the Sunday Herald.
Government fisheries advisors fear that the "slaughter on a mass scale" is seriously depleting the Forth's natural resources, yet for years nothing has been done to combat the problem, they say.
Longannet, Scotland's biggest power station, sucks in up to 90 tonnes of water a second from the Forth for cooling. Fish in the water, along with seaweed and other debris, are filtered out by screens and thrown away.
Unpublished surveys carried out for the station's operator, ScottishPower, reveal that that is the unfortunate fate of 21 million fish a year, weighing 160 tonnes. Since Longannet started up in 1972, some 700 million fish could have been killed.
More than 30 species of fish have been found dead, including herring, whiting and sprat which are commercially important.
River lamprey and sparling, both endangered species, have also been detected among the dead.
Such a large-scale loss of fish has alarmed the Fisheries Committee, a group of independent experts which advises the Scottish Executive. For the past eight years it has been pushing behind the scenes to try to get action to reduce the kill.
But no progress has been made, and the committee has expressed its "disappointment" to environment ministers.
Some evidence suggests that simply broadcasting a noise would cause at least half the fish to swim away from Longannet's 12 cooling water intakes.
"This is slaughter on a mass scale which has damaged the Firth of Forth's natural resources - yet for years it has gone unnoticed and unpunished, " said fisheries consultant Niall GrahamCampbell, who has stood down after 10 years on the Fisheries Committee.
"In an agricultural context a single event resulting in a kill of 1per cent of the fish numbers in this annual kill would result in the imposition of a massive fine.
"Yet this continuing depredation of the Scottish environment appears to be ignored by the authorities."
Graham-Campbell also criticised the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) for failing to take the problem seriously.
"I am surprised that Sepa shows so little concern for this massive ongoing kill of the juvenile fish of many different species, some of which are of commercial importance and others of which are rare, " he said.
That is denied by Sepa, which is investigating the status of fish in the Firth of Forth. "Longannet's operations will be having a contributory impact on fish populations in the Forth and, as with all ecological issues, we're taking this seriously, " said Lex Pearce, a marine biologist with Sepa.
Most of the dead fish are small but, according to leading freshwater biologist Professor Peter Maitland, of the University of Glasgow, that is not surprising. "This area is well-known to be of importance as a nursery area for commercial stocks of North Sea species, " he said.
Maitland, the author of the Longannet fish surveys, is concerned about the risk to North Sea fish populations. "It is important that each nursery is given as much protection as possible so that there is adequate recruitment of stocks to the sea, " he added.
ScottishPower, however, claimed that there is no evidence that Longannet has actually damaged fish stocks. Nevertheless, it accepted that it should try to prevent so many fish from being killed.
The company is investing up to GBP500,000 in testing a "water wheel" system designed to lift out the fish and return them to the river. Other methods, including scaring away the fish with light or noise, had not proven effective, it argued.
The fish kill is "an unfortunate legacy of the decision made in the 1960s to site the station on a narrow stretch of the Forth estuary, " said a company spokesman. "ScottishPower is committed to the protection of the environment and accepts that it must minimise the impact of its operations."
NEED TO KNOW
THE FACTS Longannet power station is killing 21 million fish a year in its cooling water, raising concerns about depleted fish stocks in the Firth of Forth.
BACKGROUND Longannet, which burns coal, has been labelled as one of the dirtiest plants in Scotland because of the amount of pollution it produces.
NEED TO KNOW MORE?
http: //tinyurl. com/c6xqa Longannet power station.
http: //tinyurl. com/ldfxo The Executive's Fisheries Committee.
www. sepa. org. uk Scottish Environment Protection Agency.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article