New fish life for pollution-hit Trent

STRETCHES of the River Trent ravaged by a toxic cyanide and sewage spill are to be restocked with tens of thousands of fish.

The Environment Agency has earmarked many of the chub, dace, barbel, roach and bream for sections near Burton and Stoke-on-Trent.

Both stretches were badly hit when the pollution seeped into the waterway at a sewage treatment plant in the Potteries last month.

Workers from the organisation will also use some of the stock, bred at an agency fish farm at Calverton, near Nottingham, to repopulate the River Tame, a waterway affected when summer storms brought pollution from the Birmingham area.

The more mature fish, now two or three years old, will be released into the rivers this winter and baby fish, known as fry, and those up to a year old will be added by early next summer.

Using fish with a wide age range will hopefully lead to a faster recovery of stocks.

Nick Eyre, the technical officer at Calverton, said: "Over the next five years or so we will continue to build up fish stocks in the affected stretches of river by releasing even more young fish."