Frustration Increases for residents at Dunkard Creek

West Virginia Public Broadcasting
23 September 2009
By Ben Adducchio

Dead fish and salamanders were discovered at Dunkard Creek in early September.

Local residents are getting restless as officials are still baffled by what is killing fish in Monongalia County’s Dunkard Creek.

Residents found scores of dead fish on the creek banks earlier this month.

At first, officials suspected discharge from an underground mine might be to blame, but now other causes are being considered since dead fish were found in the sections of creek above the mine discharge.

There is one word that immediately comes to mind when Jesse Graham thinks about the fish kill in the creek that runs behind his home: frustrated.

“I certainly am,” he said, “I continue to be frustrated, will be frustrated, until there is a solution to the problem.”

Three weeks ago, Graham and his son found some of the dead fish around Graham’s barn.

Graham’s son contacted the Department of Environmental Protection.

The DEP sent Graham a written response saying there were still no conclusive findings and that the investigation was ongoing.

Graham says until he gets answers, he is wary of going near the creek.

“I would not let anyone get within breathing distance of it at the moment,” he said.

To date, more than 160 aquatic species have died along Dunkard Creek, in both West Virginia and Pennsylvania.

At least eight of those species were mussels, unique to the creek.

West Virginia Division of Natural Resources Biologist Frank Jernejcic says it may take decades for those species to recover.

“It’s a real tragedy that we have eliminated such a large population of animals that have been there for probably centuries,” he said.

“This was one of the only two or three streams in the whole Monongahela drainage in West Virginia that you had these animals.”

The DNR is one of the agencies trying to pinpoint what’s killing the aquatic life.

Jernejcic says nothing has been ruled out.

“We’ve got to determine that, so we can hopefully also determine that it won’t happen again,” he said, “when that occurs, we’ll be ready to start remediation in the stream.”

But it could take awhile to get there. The answers seem to be harder to find as the investigation has progressed.

At first officials and residents suspected Consol Energy’s Blacksville No. 2 mine, but now they aren’t sure.

Mike Zeto is the DEP’s Chief of Environmental Enforcement. He says mining might have contributed to the fish kill, but there are other possibilities, too.

“There are mines that work in that area other than Consol as well,” he said.

“We have made an effort to evaluate the potential for midnight dumping, say from hollers of oil and gas waste in the area. There’s a lot of truck traffic in that area.”

Zeto says local residents have reported seeing tanker trucks along the creek, leading to fears that companies were dumping wastewater from Marcellus Shale gas drilling.

“The long and the short of it, it was a company that was in fact withdrawing water from the stream that was doing some flow augmentation elsewhere,” he said.

“We were aware of it, Pennsylvania was aware of it.”

The DEP is still investigating, and plans on talking to local residents.

One of those residents is 81-year old Jesse Graham, who hopes nothing like this ever happens again.

“If I was young, and had family, and this problem did not get cleaned up, I certainly would get away from here,” he said.