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Fish Kill on my Favorite Pond

2K views 2 replies 2 participants last post by  natrix 
#1 ·
From Utah we must travel for our steelhead or salmon, and the trout arent nearly that big so with fly rod in hand I drive to my favorite Carp pond for the next best thing. Except this week a local food supliment maker has killed all or nearly all the fish in the whole system of ponds. Utah is known for cheep labor and lax environmetal enforcement which is why industry is so popular here. I wrote the following in responce to the article in the paper.

I read with great concern your recent article on the fish kill in Springville. Those ponds particularly the pond at Flowserv have provided many hours of enjoyment for my friends and I. We fly fish for Carp which is the best kept secret in town. This was one of the best places to fly fish for Carp that I have found, primarily because its an urban pond and people feed the ducks with bread. We even developed a new fly called the pop corn fly which we used to catch and release hundreds of large fish over the past three or four years. Sport Carp fishing is growing in popularity and ponds like these have been wonderful places to spend fishing on a summer afternoon.

I am civil engineer with a background in aquatic chemistry, waste water treatment, and I also take an interest in aquatic eco systems. I would think that because carp which are an extremely hardy fish that can live in fairly low oxygen concentrations have been killed, that many of the aquatic invertebrates upon which other fish including carp feed would have been wiped out also. Not a good thing for a pond or a stream. I also have the concern that what ever was spilled must have been either in a large volume, very toxic or have an extremely high biological or chemical oxygen demand, or all of the above. "light organic based vegetable wash" sounds a little innocuous. But then sometimes that all it takes to cause a killing oxygen sag.
 
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#3 ·
link to the article in the paper

timwatts:

The guy who wrote the article has an e-mail address, and he hasnt had much more to say about it. (meddington@sltrib.com)
You can follow the sltrib.com links and see if you can get the atricle. Mostly though the atrical is not about the fish which is too bad. I suspect there is more to it that is being said. My guess is a high BOD organic soup with a cerfactant which whould not only help disolve the waste but also dispurse it. It was enough to knock out the trickling filter at the treatment plant which is up stream of the ponds. A plant operators worst nightmare.

About a discharge permit, I dont know, but Im certainly going to find out.

I went down there on thursday night last week to check it out. I saw two fish, one was belly up on the bottom and the other was swimming on its side in shallow water. I walked around the biggest pond and where once I would have seen hundreds of fish there were only these two. Im mad as hell because this was the place where I could fish all winter long during even the coldest weather and catch fish up to 15 lb, on a 6 wt rod on a dry fly.

Natrixs
 
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