Root Cause of Dunkard Creek Fish Kill Perplexes Officials Representatives with the West Virginia DEP and DNR update lawmakers about the mysterious fish kill near Morgantown.

WOWK-TV
15 October 2009
By Walt Williams

CHARLESTON -- While state investigators have more or less pinpointed a rare form of toxic algae as the culprit behind devastating fish kills in Monongalia County’s Dunkard Creek, the question remains just what conditions existed to let it to get out of control in the first place.

It’s a mystery that has left investigators perplexed, according to a presentation made to state lawmakers Thursday. High salinity and high pH levels probably led to the algal blooms, and nearby coal mining operations are among the leading culprits of the pollution. But the mines alone don’t seem be able to count for the pollution levels that are being seen, at least at first glance.

“It is like a CSI investigation to try to figure this out and put it in context,” said Frank Jernejcic, a fisheries biologist for the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources' District 1.

Dunkard Creek was the scene of large fish kills in September. Fish populations were decimated and mussel populations were wiped out. Those mussel populations likely won’t return to pre-kill levels for generations, Jernejcic said.

The kills only affected those creatures that draw their oxygen from the water. Invertebrate populations, which get oxygen from air, were left pretty much intact.

“So there is macroinvertebrate life still in the stream: we still have bugs,” Scott Mandirola of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection said.

That fact was one of many that pointed to one type of golden algae, a species first identified in Texas in 1985. Like the better-known algae that causes red tide, the golden algae identified in the creek produce a toxin. But unlike red tide, the toxin doesn’t affect insects, birds or mammals, although state officials still warn against eating the fish from the creek.

Investigators found high concentrations of golden algae in the creek, which gave the water a tea-brown tint. Normally, golden algae can’t compete with green algae. But when water become particularly brackish, golden algae gains the competitive edge and displaces its green rival.

State regulators have recorded unprecedently high numbers of chlorides, a component of salt, in the creek’s water in recent years. A leading source of that pollution could be discharges from CONSOL Energy mines that treat and discharge into the creek brackish waters from mine pools deep underground.

Critics point out the DEP has allowed CONSOL to discharge polluted water above the regulatory limit for a number of years.

But the chloride levels were much higher than what is typically found in mine water, and fish kills have been occurring upstream from one of CONSOL’s larger mines.

Mines are not the only source of potential pollution. Discharges from coalbed-methane wells are another. Septic systems and road salts also have been linked to high chloride levels in bodies of water, although almost always in urban areas and not rural streams.

The question of just where the pollution coming from is an important one for state regulators because if Dunkard Creek is any indication, then more than a dozen state streams and rivers with relatively high salinity levels are at risk. There is no surefire way to eradicate golden algae, and regulators may never know how the non-native species arrived in West Virginia in the first place.

The only way to beat it is to prevent the conditions that allow it to bloom in the first place, according to Mandirola.

State lawmakers have the option of taking action. They could establish standards for waterways, which could regulate the amount of dissolved solids — or salts — that polluters can put into streams. They also draft most of the rules and regulations the DEP operates under.

“DEP certainly has to do what we tell them to do,” Joint Oversight Committee on State Water Resources, Co-Chairman Delegate Tim Manchin, D-Marion, said. He added lawmakers can always change policy. “But I think we’re a little ways from doing that.”