Mon County Fish Kill Thought to Be Over Continues, Widens
The State Journal
17 September 2009
By Pam Kasey
MORGANTOWN -- A Monongalia County fish kill that was thought to be over
by Sept. 5 has begun again.
The first call about the incident came in on Sept. 1, according to
Frank Jernejcic of the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources.
The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection received a
call from a local resident about dead fish at Pentress, about 8 miles
above where Dunkard Creek enters Pennsylvania, Jernejcic said at a
Sept. 11 monthly Monongahela River Water Quality Forum in Morgantown.
Dead fish is a highest priority report, Jernejcic said, because time
can be of the essence in tracking the cause. He and a DEP employee were
on the creek that afternoon and for several days after.
Through the week, they found dead fish from 10.2 miles above the state
line all the way down to about the state line; none dead fish were
found further downstream in Pennsylvania.
Fish were congregating at the mouths of tributaries, Jernejcic said,
and avoiding the main stem. He added that Dunkard Creek has one of the
most diverse mussel populations in the state, and mussels were dead,
too.
Bradley Swiger of the DEP's Office of Environmental Enforcement
described the water's appearance.
"There was a rust-colored look to the stream," Swiger said.
He described it as more like tea than like the yellowboy that can
appear on the bed of an acid mine drainage-affected stream or like any
oily substance floating on top.
"It did not start at a point source. It wasn't something that you could
just track up to a pipe."
The source wasn't clear.
"I've looked at probably a couple hundred (fish kills)," Jernejcic
said. "Generally, where there's dead fish, the thing starts shortly
above where you first see dead fish -- it's fairly obvious where you
start looking. In this case it's a little different."
The agencies analyzed the water on the spot for pH, conductivity and
dissolved oxygen, Swiger said, and did not find anything far out of the
ordinary.
They also sent samples to labs to test for a broad range of substances
that require more complex measurements. Metals, nutrients, total
dissolved solids, total suspended solids, organics, volatiles and
semi-volatiles were some of the substances mentioned.
The obvious suspect in the heavily mined Dunkard Creek basin is acid
mine drainage. But areas below the major mines, miles upstream, did not
have dead fish.
"We had inspectors go out and check all of the mine discharges upstream
of Pentress," said Mike Carico of the DEP's Division of Mining and
Reclamation, describing one mine as a mile and a half and another as 10
miles upstream.
"They were all found to be in compliance with their NPDES permit
limitations," Carico said.
A second and related suspect is mine pools, voids left behind by past
mining that fill over time and sometimes overflow, discharging acid
mine drainage into local waterways.
Everyone involved with the mine pools agreed the levels in the area are
low at this time -- several hundred feet below the stream elevation.
A third possibility that has occurred to local residents is brine from
gas well drilling operations.
Martin Niverth of the Department of Economic Development in Greene
County, Pa., where Dunkard Creek enters from West Virginia, said he
gets calls all the time about tankers dumping brine in streams.
Swiger said his office investigates similar calls from time to time and
the trucks always turn out to be withdrawing, not dumping.
Jernejcic agreed.
"We acknowledge that that may happen," Swiger said, "but we've never
seen it."
The water sampling results should shed light on that.
Jernejcic said no explanation has been ruled out.
"We're trying to leave no stone unturned," he said. "Even stuff that we
say, 'No, that's ridiculous,' or 'We've never seen that before,' we're
checking it out."
Meanwhile, though, the fish are dying again.
Two attendees at the Sept. 11 water quality forum visited the creek
that afternoon and found more dead fish, according to Barry Pallay of
the Upper Monongahela River Association and the Vision 2020 Monongahela
River Recreation and Commerce Committee. The two organizations host the
monthly water quality forum.
"DEP and DNR are out in force today," Pallay said on Sept. 14, "and on
Tuesday, they will probably be taking samples of fish for analysis. The
information I have is that the problem is widening."