The district sub-collector, along with a team of senior-level officials, recently visited the site where dead fishes were found floating in the Brahmani river. The visit follows the recent demonstration staged by local villagers in front of the sub-collector’s office. Sub-collector Panposh Himansu Behera, along with block development officer Lathikata and the Rourkela tehsildar, visited the spot to take stock of the situation at Kansar village near Jharabati bank of the Brahmani. Behera said: “We are in discussion with the villagers on the issue.” He confirmed that he also found some dead fishes floating in the water and warned the villagers not to sell or consume such fishes. “We have put all the dead fishes into the dug hole and covered them,” he said. Behera said he had also apprised the Odisha State Pollution Control Board informing of the incident. “They took some samples of the water.” The villagers were, however, left panic-stricken after seeing dead fishes in the river. They depend on fishing up to a large extent for livelihood and food. The demonstrators dispersed only after Behera assured them of timely action. “We will be doomed if there are no fishes,” said a villager. They directly blamed the Rourkela Steel Plant for the problem. “We are suffering as the plant water is directly released into the river,” he said. However, sources in the steel plant said they would definitely check for any kind of lapses, but this could not be the sole reason. The board’s regional officer Hemendra Narayana Nayak, too, visited the place. “It was because of depletion of the dissolved oxygen in water for which the fishes died. Pollution could be one of the reasons, and for that, we have collected water samples from six places. Not only the plant water, but also the corporation’s water is released into the river.”