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River Brosna
River Brosna at Swim-Two-Birds
Origin	Near Mullingar, County Westmeath
Mouth	Shannon at Shannon Harbour

The River Brosna (Irish: An Bhrosnach) is a river in Ireland, flowing through County Westmeath and County Offaly.

The river rises in Lough Owel north of Mullingar ^[1] and is a tributary of the River Shannon. It meets the Shannon at Shannon Harbour.

The Brosna begins as a small river, flowing from Lough Owel in a south-south-westerly direction through Mullingar, into Lough Ennell. From Lough Ennell, the river Brosna, flows into Kilbeggan, where it still powers the mill at Lockes Distillary. The Brosna swells further in size, before it arrives at Clara, Ferbane, and north of Banagher, all towns of County Offaly, where it merges with the river Shannon.

The river Brosna is popular for fly fishing and has stocks of brown trout as well as some salmon and grilse.^[2] However it has, in recent years, suffered somewhat from pollution problems due to its poor assimilative capacity and the discharge of untreated sewage in the Mullingar area during storm conditions.^[3]

Works, to the cost of IR £750,000,^[4] were undertaken on the river in the late 1940s and early 1950s to improve drainage in the river’s catchment area. As part of the Arterial Drainage Scheme, designed to tackle poor drainage caused by Ireland’s relatively low lying topography, the river was deepened and widened. This has left the river with rather high banks in many places.^[5]

1. ^ http://www.askaboutireland.ie/show_narrative_page.do?page_id=3907.
2. ^ http://www.shannon-fishery-board.ie/guides/game/river-brosna.htm.
3. ^ ”Over 50% of Brosna Polluted”, Westmeath Examiner, July 21st, 2001.
4. ^ http://historical-debates.oireachtas.ie/D/0128/D.0128.195112040062.html.
5. ^ An investigation of the effects of an arterial drainage scheme on the rainfall-runoff transformation behaviour of the Brosna catchment in Ireland, Bhattarai, K. P., O'Connor, K. M., EGS - AGU - EUG Joint Assembly, Abstracts from the meeting held in Nice, France, 6 - 11 April 2003, abstract #12112.