Valley Creek water main break

[jrj]

"A should stock the stream....." NO. How about they shut it down for the year and let it come back. Plenty of other places to fish with stocked trout. Not many other with a wild population.

 

[NewSal]

PhillyFlyFish wrote:
I think Aqua owns the pipes and receives a fine for each dead fish. Probably cheaper than fixing the pipe/pipes so it probably won't be the last time.

I can assure you that Aqua is working diligently to replace their watermains.

 

[salmonoid]

JustFish wrote:

PhillyFlyFish wrote:
I think Aqua owns the pipes and receives a fine for each dead fish. Probably cheaper than fixing the pipe/pipes so it probably won't be the last time.

I wonder how they determine how many died considering the stream was moving pretty good for a day. It probably washed many of them out into the Schuylkill River.

When a spill or accident occurs, the state goes into inventory mode. Everything that is killed is counted, and there is a cost tallied against the dead fish, salamanders, turtles, whatever. I know someone who had a manure pit spill, and this is what the state did on the small stream that was downstream from them. In this case, where there is also an associated flushing, simulated higher water event, I'm not sure if they estimate additional killed organisms based on what they actually find, or if it is limited to what they can actually count.

 

[afishinado]

NewSal wrote:

PhillyFlyFish wrote:
I think Aqua owns the pipes and receives a fine for each dead fish. Probably cheaper than fixing the pipe/pipes so it probably won't be the last time.

I can assure you that Aqua is working diligently to replace their watermains.

Here is a report of the same thing happening 9 years ago in the exact same area with the same results:

http://www.dailylocal.com/article/DL/20090529/NEWS/305299979

 

[PhillyFlyFish]

afishinado wrote:

NewSal wrote:

PhillyFlyFish wrote:
I think Aqua owns the pipes and receives a fine for each dead fish. Probably cheaper than fixing the pipe/pipes so it probably won't be the last time.

I can assure you that Aqua is working diligently to replace their watermains.

Here is a report of the same thing happening 9 years ago in the exact same area with the same results:

http://www.dailylocal.com/article/DL/20090529/NEWS/305299979

NewSal - I respect your opinion but I think you've been misguided, or work at Aqua.

Here is another example from 2014: https://www.wateronline.com/doc/busted-water-main-unleashes-gallons-of-sewage-near-philly-0001

 

[lestrout]

Yo Phil

Not just to back NewSal up (I don't know him to my knowledge), but I just learned from Pete Hughes, Prez of VFTU, that investigation has revealed that Aqua was not the culprit for this latest disaster. The broken pipe belongs to a private party.

Aqua has a huge number of water mains and pipes to maintain, and they are indeed diligent about proactively addressing the breaks and in fact preventing some of them, not just reacting after the fact. Keep in mind that our area, like much of the Northeast, has infrastructure that our Founding Fathers didn't plan on keeping intact for lo these many (by American standards) centuries. Too bad the Romans didn't build all our infrastructure, judging by how durable their aqueducts and concrete have proven to be. (I'll pass over their use of lead urns for their wine).

A big crew of DEP, VFTU, anglers, National Park Service, Treddyfin Township and other concerned and involved agencies and citizens have been working hard on this disaster.

 

[HopBack]

NewSal - I respect your opinion but I think you've been misguided, or work at Aqua.

Here is another example from 2014: https://www.wateronline.com/doc/busted ... f-sewage-near-philly-0001

That's a sewer main break which would be owned by the township. It has nothing to do with Aqua.


I don't work for Aqua, however when I was in college I worked for a water and sewer construction company. Aqua acquired the water rights in the City of Coatesville, PA (chester county), and the first thing they did was replace all of the old iron ductile force mains with new PVC.

It would be in the best interest for a water company to fix a problem the right way. Loss of water means a loss of revenue and in the case of a break it may mean 1000s of customers are without service.

 

[JustFish]

My worry is Valley is gonna take a real long time to recover. I used to fish it daily. Finally moved back into the area this year and was looking forward to fishing it again. Guess that won’t be happening for years. What a shame!

 

[PhillyFlyFish]

I stand corrected! Thanks.

 

[sgrim]

JustFish wrote:
Guess that won’t be happening for years. What a shame!

So what is a realistic recovery time from something like this? Is it too soon to tell?

 

[TYoung]

The good news is that as soon as the water main stops leaking into the creek, the water quality goes back to normal quite quickly. That means the trout population can start replenishing this coming spawning season.

 

[AndyP]

I walked a good portion up in the Chesterbrook section from Bradford Rd up to Little Valley this evening. This is probably a good half mile or more and I saw one trout. Dozens upon dozens upon dozen of dead YOY, trout, suckers and dace/minnows .. A very sad site. Ran into two other guys, one who had walked up from out of the park and it was the same story for the 3 of us.....lots and lots of dead fish. I took photos until I just couldn’t anymore. And remember this is 3 days later. I saw lots of fish that had been scavenged already. Biggest fish was a 16” sucker and the biggest brown was 14”....dead.

 

[EazyP]

What fkin morons are in charge over there?? All the times this has happened you would think all the necessary precautions would be taken.

 

[sgrim]

TYoung wrote:
The good news is that as soon as the water main stops leaking into the creek, the water quality goes back to normal quite quickly. That means the trout population can start replenishing this coming spawning season.

Sure the flowing water is more or less back to normal, but what about the impact on the substrate? If it's been effectively bleached, I would guess this is a 2 year recovery at least.

 

[afishinado]

The chlorinated water ran through Little Valley (a Class A) first to reach Valley. The amount of water released would have tripled or quadrupled the flow running through the smaller trib, which has a lot less volume to dilute the chlorinated water. I would guess the results were even more devastating there. Really sad.

 

[Zak]

It won't take that long to recover fortunately. Much like any ecosystem the nitches will be filled quickly by surviving fish as well as fish from the heavy population of trout located Upstream. I'll go so far as to say I'll bet people only really notice a big difference for a few months at the most. Thankfully there are a LOT of trout and a lot of miles of water above that point to lend a helping hand to the lower stream. Macros are the same. They'll move in fast and fill the now available habitat. Terrible event but Valley has shown remarkable recovery abilities over the years. Truely an amazing stream.

 

[shadspoon]

A lesson learned from this spill is load your phone with the phone numbers and call! Valley is a special creek to a lot of us. The more eyes we have out there the better. We will have more events such as this.
The trout will repopulate fairly quickly as will all the other critters. I am confident I will see redds in the area this fall!
And Afish is right about Little Valley not being buffered. I was there Monday evening and it was way worse than Valley. Everything was dead. Pete Lee VFTU

PA Dept. of Environmental Protection 484-250-5900 (24 / 7)
Pa Fish and Boat South east Region 717-626-0228 (8-4 weekdays)
Chester County Conservation District 610-925-4920

 

[lestrout]

Picking up on shad's comments, some of the progressive WCO's like our very own Bob Bonney will give you their cell numbers, so you won't get the delays from going through the Harrisburg office. Another tip: often reception is poor in the valleys, but if you have even one bar on your cell, a TEXT will go through. Even if it doesn't, if you leave your phone on, while you hike around, if you wander into a spot that has a bit of coverage, the text will automatically pump right out.

 

[moon1284]

Ignorant question, but if little valley was devastated, why not use this as an opportunity to stock heritage strain (or whatever you call them) st?

 

[sarce]

The environment there is too harsh for brookies because of the insane flash flooding. They tried to re-introduce brookies to the upper part of a tributary of little valley recently and that failed. There are also browns in that same tributary lower down, as well as in Little Valley upstream of the fish kill site.