By MARCUS SCHNECK, The Patriot-News
October 05, 2009, 6:15PM
A senior staffer with the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission Monday called on the state Department of Environmental Protection to declare the Susquehanna River “impaired” and launch an investigation into the sources of that impairment.
“We put enough of the pieces of the puzzle together to say that the river is impaired,” said John Arway, chief of the commission’s Division of Environmental Services.
Arway’s comments followed a presentation at a meeting of Fish and Boat commissioners by Jeffrey Chaplin of U.S. Geological Survey findings on factors impacting the smallmouth bass population in the river.
The commission, USGS, DEP and others have been investigating the situation in the river since 2005, when reports of dead bass and deteriorating bass-fishing conditions began to surface.
Columnaris bacteria, which infects fish already under stress from other factors, noted on dead and dying, young bass, has been linked as at least a symptom of the deterioration of the river.
Chaplin said the USGS, using monitoring stations at several points along the river in 2008, determined that the microhabitats used by the young bass were more stressed by water quality conditions – lower dissolved oxygen concentrations in the water and higher water temperatures – than other, nearby parts of the river.
He noted that conditions have grown more stressful for the fish since the 1970s and that near-normal or lower summertime river flows appeared to exacerbate the problem.
In addition, according to the report, concentrations of phosphorus and nitrogen in the river water “were routinely within the range considered to be conducive to excessive algal growth,” which can further aggravate the stressful conditions.
In previous meetings, anglers have pointed to everything from agricultural run-off to sewage treatment plants to power plants with warmwater discharge into the river as the source of the problem.
However, Chaplin cautioned, “there is no smoking gun here,” based on the study to-date.
He said the USGS finished its 2009 monitoring just last week and is beginning its analysis of the data collected.
“It’s a combination of many factors,” Chaplin explained, including “emerging contaminants” like hormones and chemicals entering the river.
He also noted that the Delaware and Allegheny rivers, where the columnaris and die-off situation has not been noted in smallmouth bass, have less stressful environments for the fish, based on higher dissolved-oxygen concentrations and lower water temperatures in those other waters.
Arway pointed to DEP because it is the state’s point-agency for enforcement of clean water standards.
“We need to find out why we’re getting dissolved oxygen violations in these critical habits,” he said of the conditions in the Susquehanna, which is considered one of the premier smallmouth bass rivers in the country.
“There needs to be a nutrient-focused study on the major tributaries of the river,” explained Arway.
From PennLive.com:
http://blog.pennlive.com/wildaboutpa/2009/10/pennsylvania_fish_boat_commiss.html
