BLACK RIVER, St Elizabeth – The weekend fish kill in Black River has been blamed on dunder pollution, but up to yesterday the source of the pollution was still uncertain.

Yesterday, a spokesman for Appleton Estate, a sugar- producing and distillation plant, denied a claim by chairman of the Elim Community Friendly Society, Keith Adams, that his company was responsible for the fish kill.

“I am not aware of anything at Appleton that could be causing that (the fish kill in the Black River). We have been working with NEPA and we have spent millions to deal with this,” said Ian Maxwell, the CEO of Appleton.

“I am 100 per cent certain that it is not coming from us, but at the same time we are going to test the water to see if we can identify what it is and where it is coming from,” Maxwell said.

Hundreds of dead fish washed up in the Black River and its tributaries on the weekend, leaving several residents who depend on fishing for a living worried.

On a boat tour of the Black River Monday, several aquatic creatures, including fish, crabs and shrimp, their bodies in varying stages of decomposition, were seen floating along the banks of the river, which is popular among tourists for safari tours.

Not long after, an Observer team boarded a tour boat to see the extent of the fish kill, a fisherman, who identified himself as ‘Mr Tweety’, who had gone to check on his seven fish pots set in the river’s brackish waters on the weekend, said they were all dead, as he rowed past.

In Elim, a few miles up the road where the majority of the residents were relocated by the Alumina Partners of Jamaica from bauxite-rich areas such as Nain, Littitz and Myersville, the stench was unbearable. The once crystal clear Grass River, which runs through the community and into the Black River, was the colour of soot or coal and dogs gathered at the water’s edge, feasting on the dead fish trapped in the reeds on both sides of the river.

Uton Williams, who has been residing in Elim since 1987, said the dunder was a real nuisance, causing even shortness of breath in his eight-month old child.

Another Elim resident, who only gave his name as Ken, said the stench from the dunder was causing some residents to fall sick.

Residents of Elim, said they were planning a street demonstration to protest against the pollution of the Black River.

On Monday, Keith Jones, acting investigator for the southern region of the National Environment and planning Agency (NEPA), admitted that the agency had received frequent reports of dunder in the river and the surfacing of dead fish. He said, however, that a lack of manpower was to be blamed for the agency’s apparent slowness to act.

“Investigations are being conducted. We will be taking fish and water samples, which will be taken to the lab for analysis,” Jones said. He said it was unlikely that the dunder was coming from the Appleton factory.

“We have had similar reports on a number of occasions, but we have not been able to identify the source. We have gone to Appleton and we haven’t seen any escape from that area. As far as I know, the dunder produced at Appleton goes into a storage pond and is then trucked to the canefields to be used as (fertilisation).”

Jones said, however, that the water table in that area of St Elizabeth was only six feet deep, a factor which led him to question whether the stored dunder could have seeped from the pond through the limestone rocks and into the groundwater.

NEPA said dunder in itself posed no threat to humans, but it was not clear what effect the consumption of dunder-contaminated sea food could have.