Valley Creek - fish kill

[Maurice]

lestrout wrote:
I'm hoping the redds survive the spill.

Eggs will not be affected, trust me on this...LOL. in fact some yearling fish may have saved themselves by burying themselves in the in the stream bottom.

 

[turkey]

geebee wrote:
the villain is local and federal governments who won't renew antiquated water and sewer lines with modern replacements - modern plastic lines don't crack according to my dad who is a petrochemical engineer...

I'm no expert but I do work in the water treatment field. In my experience all lines eventually crack. Drinking water/wastewater infrastructure is in general getting long in the tooth. I've heard some talk, mostly secondhand, about trying to remove the combined sewage overflow (CSO) system from the rivers in Allegheny county and having ALL sewage piped to our wastewater facility. This would prevent the sewers from overflowing into the creeks/rivers during high water events which is the current accepted practice. Remember dilution is the solution to pollution. The term used to describe the cost of the project was "astronomical". In general revenue is collected from water/sewer customers, not taxes, but no system wants to announce a massive rate hike. Westmoreland Water just announced a 25% rate increase and customers are pretty fired up.


Does anyone know if it's a matter of fact that these fish were killed by chlorinated water?

 

[AndyP]

Turkey - it occurred right after a pretty good size water main broke and flowed into the stream for a good bit of time.

 

[turkey]

AndyP wrote:
Turkey - it occurred right after a pretty good size water main broke and flowed into the stream for a good bit of time.

Thanks Andy. Very interesting. Do you guys know if Pennsylvania American Water manages the utility for that area? There has been some chatter about the use of chlorine vs. chloramines to disinfect drinking water. Both can be lethal to fish but the speculation is that chloramines are much more problematic to aquatic life. I've never seen a credible definitive study on the issue however.

Hopefully Valley bounces back quickly.

 

[salmonoid]

With the only documented break being a water main, I'd think that chlorine as the death agent is a matter of fact.

Mo - given that chlorine is highly toxic to fish (especially the little ones), are we to take your response as being tongue in cheek?

 

[AndyP]

Turkey - I'm pretty sure it's AquaPa or Aqua America, whichever name the go by now. The stream is very tight and narrow up there but there are scour holes and lots of woody debris for habitat. I don't fish up in that area because I've always thought of it as a refuge area in my mind.

 

[Acristickid]

Brokaws pissed

 

[jackstrawphilly]

I fished today above the park and didn't see any dead fish. Pretty good action on nymphs today. I've been using stuff w pink hot spots and one called Rainbow warrior as I need something to tie beside same old zebra midges. Working pretty well.

 

[Maurice]

salmonoid wrote:
With the only documented break being a water main, I'd think that chlorine as the death agent is a matter of fact.

Mo - given that chlorine is highly toxic to fish (especially the little ones), are we to take your response as being tongue in cheek?

Sometime when we meet I will tell you a story of an unintended experiment I made a few years ago with tap water and small trout. Its both funny and revealing.

 

[turkey]

acristickid wrote:
Brokaws pissed

And not just cuz Brian Williams replaced him.

 

[pcray1231]

Sometime when we meet I will tell you a story of an unintended experiment I made a few years ago with tap water and small trout.

I remember doing this when I was like 12. We made a dam at the little stream at my grandfathers house, and wanted to stock a trout in it (it was a chub stream, not a trout stream). We were going there the next day.

So we went out to a trout stream, caught a native, put it in the minnie bucket, and took it home. We had a cooler in the garage, all hooked up with air pumps and so forth, that at times my dad used to store minnies. We had let some water sit for a day like you do when you're starting an aquarium, and cooled it some with ice, filled the cooler, and in goes our fishy. Turned on the air pump and all was fine for a few hours.

Then of course, the water began to warm. Fish beginning to visibly struggle. So in goes some more ice, and, too much, temperature shock! Oops. As he went listless we frantically dumped some of the ice cold water back out, and replaced it with warm fresh tap water to stabilize the temps. It lifened up alright, it went nuts! Chlorine from the fresh tap water. So we put some of that anti-chlorine stuff you use in aquariums in, and that calmed our fishy down pretty quickly.

Every few hours we'd fill a bucket with cool water, add a little ice, some of that aquarium stuff, and exchange half the water. Fish stayed alive overnight and was stocked into said dam. Which, of course, was about 75 degrees and it quickly went belly up. Oh well. We got it there.

We proceeded to catch some pumpkinseeds from a nearby farm pond and take them to our dam. That worked better. We actually caught one the next day.

Disclaimer: This was about 25 years ago. I am now aware of the ecological dangers of transporting fish to different waters. And I won't say whether the brookie was of legal length, either.

 

[Maurice]

Pat, my story is way funnier...because of my stupidity, but I felt alot of the same emotions you guys did trying to save the fish...Maybe at the Lanco flyfishing show breakfast I will share it. If I get up early enough. Otherwise...the Jamboree.