Bigger threat than the stocky guy on Cedar

[littlelehigh]

Anyone else following this:

http://articles.mcall.com/2010-04-30/news/all-a5_5jaindl.7258374apr30_1_smith-lane-and-mertztown-jaindl-land-commissioner-deana-zosky


I don't know what the Little Lehigh looked like in years past but I know how unconcerned Lower Macungie has been with silt fencing and run off water. This project borders quite a few of the head water springs of the LL which according to the township will be "marked".


Personally I don't even know how to go about insuring the necessary steps are taken to protect the watershed but I know first hand the class a waters that border the named property are in sad shape compare to 10 yrs ago.

Any one else concerned?

 

[troutwilleatflies]

I remember the LL when it WAS a premier trout stream.It never got muddy,just high and chalky green after even the heaviest rain.When the Sulphers hatched it was like a snowstorm in reverse.We use to catch water worms in the brush along the stream and use them to catch big browns at night,no more water worms today and very few big browns.
The stream was ruined permantly when they opened the land to development upstream of the country club.They ran the main sewer lines right up next to the stream and did NOTHING to protect or preserve the stream,they RAPED it and left it for dead.Then came the houses and streets and parking lots,malls,etc.Then the silt and mud came and the hatches dwindled,the bottom got silted and slimy and the LL is now a shadow of what it once was.
Another event that happened occured in 1964.Some employees of Mack Truck poured a couple barrels of arsenic into a drain that went into the LL.It killed everything down to the big Lehigh.Thousands of NATIVE brown some up to 30 inches were killed.This section was lightly fished back then but those that knew kept it close to their vest and caught huge fish right in the center of Allentown.
I started fishing the LL 60+ yrs ago,I still live in the area but rarely fish it anymore.I really don't know if this tract will affect the sream but today there are safegaurds that are taken that did n't exist in the 50's & 60's.

 

[JeffK]

Amen - development is the villain.

Sometimes I think I am losing my mind, but I remember when the Little Lehigh, Monocacy, and Bushkill Ck in Easton (and the Musconetcong in NJ) were paved with weedbeds. Combing your hand through the weeds could collect hundreds of scuds and cressbugs which the trout fattened up on all year. Ample gravel beds provided spawning sites and a mayfly factory. My memory isn't what it used to be, but the limestoners I remember are a far cry from the silted, weed poor, streams I see today.

On the other hand, the farms on the Musky and Bushkill had poor practices and the streams turned chocolate (and smelled of fertilizer) with any good rain, dairy farmers let their cattle into the streams, and the Saucon was dead from the zinc mine wastes pumped into it. Some of the industrial wastes that poured into the Lehigh and Delaware were disgusting. (I canoed the Lehigh from Whitehaven to Easton in 1966 and between the AMD in Carbon Co, the zinc smelter damage around Palmerton, and the steel mill effluents in Bethlehem it was not always a pretty sight). All was not healthy in the 1960's - there was a reason Earth Day started. As farms went broke, pollution abatement improved, and mines and factories closed the streams seemed to steadily improve until the development pressures in the last 10 years seemed to turn around a lot of the improvements.

 

[troutwilleatflies]

Back before they installed those sewer lines I caught Brook Trout from a trib of the LL that were 14" to 18" and the flesh was red.In those days we kept those fish and they were delicious.Since that stream was stocked with Brooks then,it is n't anymore,they could have been holdovers.Also caught many large Browns, that migrated from the LL, in that stream.I'll let you figure out what stream that is.