Following the collapse of a slurry lagoon on the headwaters of the Afon Cych, probably the most important tributary of the Teifi, over a thousand fish were killed yesterday.
Low water contributed to the kill which included salmon and sewin smolts and brown trout.

The Cych is in Special Area of Conservation, a grade above a SSSI and has populations of river, brook and sea lamprey as well as supporting a healthy number of otters.

It's an exceptional river system much loved by the people who live along the valley and the incident has been extremely upsetting for the community at Cwmmorgan which bore the brunt of the pollution.
Fortunately the toxicity of the slurry was diluted at the confluence of the Cych and the Afon Barddu but the Afon Pybydd and the Cych up to the confluence has been pretty well wiped.

Isn't it galling to see the endemic poor environmental management of farms being allowed to continue regardless of the relentless occurrence of this kind of incident? There seems to be no security for the maintenance of clean rivers and one can't help but believe that our rivers fates are allowed to be left dangling by a very delicate thread.

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Musha rig um du rum da

Hi Colin,

Thanks for the information; But, extremely saddened by the news! The fines imposed on the polluters are IMO - Inadequate! What's to be done for the future? are the EA a strong enough body (organisation) to monitor and police our rivers properly! What a shame! How do we stop this kind of vandalism from happening time after time? Lets hope this rain will help clear the pollutant from the river quite quickly!

Extremely saddening news. As if things weren't tough enough on our rivers at the moment. Will a report be done on the cause of this incident and its impact on the river???

How is the Teifi fishing so far this year???

My other half just spotted this on the BBC website - very sad news:

BBC News - Teifi tributary slurry spill 'kills 600 young fish'

Thanks for letting us know DB and please keep us posted.

Problems in Cheltenham as well:

BBC News - Agency probes fish death puzzle at the River Chelt

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Despite the fish kill and the long term loss to the river of several age classes of salmonids the invertebrate life in the Cych below Cwmmorgan doesn't appear to have been badly effected thank goodness.
This bodes well for the remaining fish but it'sjust one more of the many avoidable pollution incidents in the catchment.
The heartening aspect to this disheartening event was that the EA received a particularly high number of reports about it which indicates the strong regard which the health of the river's held in.

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Do you think we should warn the paddlers? Don't want them picking up any nasties, do we.