SAWDUST IN STREAMS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 292, 9 December 1926, Page 9

SAWDUST IN STREAMS.

j A MENACE TO TROUT. j i j MILLERS FINED £15. 1 Sawmillers and anglers were engaged I in a ca»se heard in the Taumarunui Magistrate's Court, before Mr. Platts, S.M.. the other clay, before Mr. Platts, S.M., Yerex, chief ranger of the Auckland Acclimatisation Society, proceeded against the Timber Company and Brain Brothers and Aldridge, for allowing sawdust from their mills to flow into streams in which trout exist. Defendants pleaded guilty and each ] was fined £15 and costs. It was stated that sawdust in the j streams destroyed the fish in both a direct and indirect manner. In the first place, as the sawdust was being carried down the stream in suspension, it lodged in the gills of the fish, which thereafter gradually pined away and died. In the second place, it was further stated, the bed of the stream became coated with water-logged sawdust, which decayed and set up a fungus growth, which not only destroyed the ova of the fish, but prevented the hatching upon the bed of the stream, of the larvae of the numerous flies and insects which were the main and essential part of the trout's food. It was further pointed out that, in view of the destructive action of sawdust, both the Society and the Government viewed with considerable alarm the amount of pollution of this nature which was going on, and that, in order to make the sawmillers realise their responsibility in this matter, severe penalties would be asked for in the future.