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."