- An occasional series of longer Reports and Studies -

EF10. “Biological Survey of Millrace water quality (2011).”

The Millrace is a short river running from the foothills of Sliabh an Iarann, through the town of Drunshanbo,
and into Lough Allen. It passes by the back of the town, alongside the local Mart, and leaves the town just
north of the Municipal Sewage Treatment plant. This plant discharges into it and following the major onset of
Pollution of Lough Allen (c. 2010) we were concerned that this could have been a major source of the contamination
we were observing. Further discusion is in LAB. reports produced in 2011 and 2012.

In 2011 Emma Dunne from the Sligo Institute of Technology produced the report below. It is an analysis of the
Water Quality in the Millrace from the Mountains to the Mart. We deliberately did not sample below the Waste Plant
discharge as we wanted to avoid seeming confrontational and this was also a student project. However the results
she produced, using biological sampling techniques, are very interesting and show the River not to be too
badly polluted — at least as far as this survey went. Many thanks to Emma for this very useful work
which we are pleased to reproduce HERE.