Dunkard Creek Residents Blame Agencies for September Fish Kill
Officials Conducted a Meeting Dec. 3 in Pennsylvania.
The State Journal
4 December 2009
By Pam Kasey.
MOUNT MORRIS, Pa. -- West Virginia and Pennsylvania residents of the
Dunkard Creek watershed took environmental officials to task at a Dec.
3 community meeting about the death this fall of the creek’s fish and
mussels.
The kill on Dunkard Creek, an active smallmouth bass and musky fishery
and the most diverse breeding ground for mussels in the Monongahela
River drainage, first was reported to the West Virginia Department of
Environmental Protection on Sept. 1.
By the end of September, as many as 22,000 fish and all of the mussels
were dead on about 30 miles of the West Virginia Fork and the mainstem
of the creek, according to a preliminary estimate from the West
Virginia Division of Natural Resources.
A bloom of golden algae, Prymnesium parvum, unknown in this region
before September, has been identified as the secondary cause of the
kill.
The primary cause, agency investigators and university researchers
generally agree, was saline conditions from natural resource
extraction.
Coal and coalbed methane operations in the watershed produce water high
in salts, known in water quality lingo as Total Dissolved Solids.
Because producers move their salty waste water from one location to
another in the watershed for partial treatment and for disposal, it has
been difficult to pinpoint the exact cause.
Resident Frustration
Participants in the Dec. 3 meeting identified lax environmental
enforcement as the cause.
Some questioned why the federal Environmental Protection Agency
permitted CNX Gas to inject brine into a mine void that may be
connected hydrologically with other abandoned mines.
Others pointed to WVDEP’s consent order allowing CONSOL Energy to
discharge water high in chlorides through Sept. 2013. Chlorides are one
component of TDS, and removing them is expensive.
“Is it safe to say that that was a mistake, and wouldn’t you say that
that decision actually sealed the fate of Dunkard Creek?” a meeting
participant asked Patrick Campbell, assistant director of WVDEP’s
Division of Water and Waste Management.
DEP decided to overlook the fact that the creek’s streambed organisms
were suffering under the high-chloride discharge, Campbell said,
because the fishery seemed to be surviving.
“The golden algae was the kicker,” he said. “If treatment had been
installed a long time ago, this may not have happened, but the agency
was trying to let the situation play out with the opportunities that
were available to the company. … Nobody ever could have imagined what
could have happened.”
More Blooms Likely Without Protection
Golden algae typically are found in naturally salty coastal and
southern waters. Dunkard Creek was the first place they were identified
in the Mid-Atlantic region.
The algae are not always deadly. But when they outgrow their food
supply, they secrete toxins that kill gill-breathing organisms.
Once present in a watershed, the algae are difficult if not impossible
to eradicate, biologists say. At the same time, they may easily be
spread to other locations by wildlife, recreationists, industrial users
and others.
And since September, WVDEP has found golden algae in five other
especially salty streams across the state: three in the Monongahela
River basin, one in the northern panhandle and one near Charleston.
“It’s a huge threat,” said Margaret Janes of the Appalachian Center for
the Economy and the Environment, who is following the issue closely,
“both because it can kill everything in the stream and because it’s
likely to recur over years and years and likely to expand throughout
central Appalachia.”
A bill that failed in the state Legislature last March would have
required the state DEP to establish a water quality standard for TDS at
or below Pennsylvania’s standard of 500 milligrams/liter — a level
surpassed many times over during the fish kill.
Legislators are considering reintroducing the bill but making it
specific to the Monongahela River watershed.
Janes would like to see it passed for the entire state.
“I don’t think legislators can cherry-pick which streams they’re going
to protect,” she said.
Next Step for Dunkard?
Meanwhile, the situation on Dunkard Creek is reaching a critical
point.
CONSOL discontinued pumping salty water from its active Blacksville #2
mine on Sept. 17, during the fish kill.
Three months later, the mine is filling up.
“We’ve got 500 people underground,” said Jonathan Pachter of CONSOL.
“We need to keep the mine safe. At some point in time soon we’re going
to have to figure out what to do.”
DEP still is considering waiting for Sept. 2013 for a long-term
strategy, according to Campbell, and is making no requirement of CONSOL
in the short-term.
“I think the company is evaluating lots of options: Can they move the
water somewhere else, augment flow — how can they take steps themselves
to reduce TDS?” he said.
Asked whether WVDEP has the authority to rescind the consent decree and
require CONSOL to treat its discharge to the state’s existing water
quality standard for chlorides, Campbell indicated that he considered
that futile.
“The authority would be there. The ability to appeal that decision is
also there,” he said.