ENVIRONMENT Agency officials say pollution in a tributary of the River Tamar has this week dispersed, with no loss of fish stocks. The Culver Hill tributary at Gunnislake Weir turned bright orange in the incident last Wednesday, the pollution believed to have been caused by materials leaking from an old mine adit. A spokesman for the Environment Agency this week told the Times: ?Most of the pollution has now disappeared. We have run some biological checks and tests ? the water was rust-coloured and it was mainly iron oxides but would have had traces of other minerals and metals. ?We will continue to monitor the river but most of it has now been carried downstream.? The spokesman said drinking water in the area had not been affected by the pollution ? although South West Water has an abstraction point in the area, it was not operational at the time of the incident. Meanwhile, the pollution is being investigated by a team from Plymouth University. A team from the environmental science department is carrying out a year-long study into pollution in the River Tamar and took samples of the water when the pollutants were present.
