Pollution incident

I can confirm three new species for the Moat House species list - sadly the circumstances are due to pollution of the stream by raw sewage resulting in extensive fish deaths. I first smelt the problem after 4pm on Friday and soon found that the smell was coming from the stream which had turned a grey colour. Fish were gasping at the surface. I called the Environment Agency just after 5pm and to their credit they were on site just after 7pm together with Severn Trent water who they had called out. By then I had traced the source of the pollution which was coming from the grounds of a building on the opposite side of the stream. Whilst Severn Trent were tracking the problem back to a blocked sewer I started trying to rescue dying fish in order to take them upstream. I had always wondered whether the little fish in the stream were Minnows or Sticklebacks. At close quarters I was able to see we had both species and a third that I had not even suspected - Bullheads. I left the scene around 10pm, hopefully having rescued some fish to survive and breed again to repopulate the area with a larger vehicle awaited to finally unblock the sewer. By the next morning the stream refreshed by some overnight rain had returned to a proper colour but was littered with the corpses of dead fish. All very depressing but the one positive I can take out of the incident is that we have water that is normally of good quality in that it supports Minnows and Bullheads as well as the more common Sticklebacks.