The kill on Dunkard Creek, an active smallmouth bass and musky fishery and the most diverse breeding ground for mussels in the Monongahela River drainage, first was reported to the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection on Sept. 1.

By the end of September, as many as 22,000 fish and all of the mussels were dead on about 30 miles of the West Virginia Fork and the mainstem of the creek, according to a preliminary estimate from the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources.

A bloom of golden algae, Prymnesium parvum, unknown in this region before September, has been identified as the secondary cause of the kill.

The primary cause, agency investigators and university researchers generally agree, was saline conditions from natural resource extraction.

Coal and coalbed methane operations in the watershed produce water high in salts, known in water quality lingo as Total Dissolved Solids.

Because producers move their salty waste water from one location to another in the watershed for partial treatment and for disposal, it has been difficult to pinpoint the exact cause.

Resident Frustration

Participants in the Dec. 3 meeting identified lax environmental enforcement as the cause.

Some questioned why the federal Environmental Protection Agency permitted CNX Gas to inject brine into a mine void that may be connected hydrologically with other abandoned mines.

Others pointed to WVDEP’s consent order allowing CONSOL Energy to discharge water high in chlorides through Sept. 2013. Chlorides are one component of TDS, and removing them is expensive.

“Is it safe to say that that was a mistake, and wouldn’t you say that that decision actually sealed the fate of Dunkard Creek?” a meeting participant asked Patrick Campbell, assistant director of WVDEP’s Division of Water and Waste Management.

DEP decided to overlook the fact that the creek’s streambed organisms were suffering under the high-chloride discharge, Campbell said, because the fishery seemed to be surviving.

“The golden algae was the kicker,” he said. “If treatment had been installed a long time ago, this may not have happened, but the agency was trying to let the situation play out with the opportunities that were available to the company. … Nobody ever could have imagined what could have happened.”

More Blooms Likely Without Protection

Golden algae typically are found in naturally salty coastal and southern waters. Dunkard Creek was the first place they were identified in the Mid-Atlantic region.

The algae are not always deadly. But when they outgrow their food supply, they secrete toxins that kill gill-breathing organisms.

Once present in a watershed, the algae are difficult if not impossible to eradicate, biologists say. At the same time, they may easily be spread to other locations by wildlife, recreationists, industrial users and others.

And since September, WVDEP has found golden algae in five other especially salty streams across the state: three in the Monongahela River basin, one in the northern panhandle and one near Charleston.

“It’s a huge threat,” said Margaret Janes of the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment, who is following the issue closely, “both because it can kill everything in the stream and because it’s likely to recur over years and years and likely to expand throughout central Appalachia.”

A bill that failed in the state Legislature last March would have required the state DEP to establish a water quality standard for TDS at or below Pennsylvania’s standard of 500 milligrams/liter — a level surpassed many times over during the fish kill.

Legislators are considering reintroducing the bill but making it specific to the Monongahela River watershed.

Janes would like to see it passed for the entire state.

“I don’t think legislators can cherry-pick which streams they’re going to protect,” she said.

Next Step for Dunkard?

Meanwhile, the situation on Dunkard Creek is reaching a critical point.

CONSOL discontinued pumping salty water from its active Blacksville #2 mine on Sept. 17, during the fish kill.

Three months later, the mine is filling up.

“We’ve got 500 people underground,” said Jonathan Pachter of CONSOL. “We need to keep the mine safe. At some point in time soon we’re going to have to figure out what to do.”

DEP still is considering waiting for Sept. 2013 for a long-term strategy, according to Campbell, and is making no requirement of CONSOL in the short-term.

“I think the company is evaluating lots of options: Can they move the water somewhere else, augment flow — how can they take steps themselves to reduce TDS?” he said.

Asked whether WVDEP has the authority to rescind the consent decree and require CONSOL to treat its discharge to the state’s existing water quality standard for chlorides, Campbell indicated that he considered that futile.

“The authority would be there. The ability to appeal that decision is also there,” he said.