Navan's main water supply has been suspended and about 1,000 fish have been killed after water used to put out a major fire in a synthetic fibre plant on the Meath-Cavan border drained into a neighbouring river. The fire started at around midnight on Sunday in a raw materials warehouse at the Wellman International plant in Mullagh, near the Moynalty river. It destroyed two of the five warehouses in the complex and caused considerable damage to the plant's stocks of plastics, polymers and similar products.
Fire tenders from Cavan, Nobber, Kingscourt, Virginia, Bailieborough, Kells and Navan were used to fight the fire for more than 12 hours. One firefighter suffered burns from molten polymer and was taken to Navan hospital. Wellman had just started its annual three week summer shutdown and its workers are on holiday this week. The company said in a statement that the plant's management believed the fire would not delay "normal startup" after the shutdown. Yesterday morning, the Eastern Regional Fisheries Board was alerted to the presence of dead fish in the Moynalty river, also called the Borora. The Moynalty is considered to be one of the best trout rivers in the area. It also contains small salmon and eels. A board inspector who walked the river's banks yesterday noticed up to a thousand dead fish. The Moynalty flows into the Blackwater river which in turn flows into the River Boyne at Navan.
The Environmental Protection Agency said yesterday evening the fish kill had been caused by "fire water". It issued instructions to Meath County Council to "suspend supplies of water for human consumption from this source to Navan town water supply until further notice".
The council's senior engineer for sanitary services, Mr Malachy Jenkins, said all the town's supply came from the Blackwater. A storage reservoir was being reactivated as a "precautionary measure" to ensure supplies to the town during the night.
He said the first signs of shortage would come about breakfast time. Local radio carried warnings last night to people to expect some disruption and to conserve water. Mr Jenkins said around half the town would be affected and there would be low water pressure in other areas.
However, he said a supply of water from a works on the Boyne unaffected by the polluted water from the Blackwater would be on stream by midday today.
The EPA is examining Wellman's application for an Integrated Pollution Control licence. EPA inspectors from Monaghan and Dublin took samples of both the river and the liquid materials running into it at around midday yesterday.
Local anglers told The Irish Times shortly after midday that it was clear the large amounts of water used to put out the fire in the Wellman chemical product warehouses had flushed through the drains into the river.
A station officer at Kells, the nearest fire station, said Wellman had a good safety record given the highly inflammable nature of the raw materials it used. The local fire brigade had been called out half a dozen times to minor fires in the plant in the past 20 years, he said.
Last October, 260 production workers of 490 at the £45 million plant went back to work after a bitter three-month strike which at one point led to Wellman International's US management warning that it could lead to a complete reconsideration of the company's future in Ireland.