Letort fish kill

Suggesting a lie or coverup is over the top. How I read it is this:

- There was a fish kill in the Letort.

- There was an automatic monitoring alarm on the barracks water supply that triggered.

- The water supply and Letort are not supposed to be connected. Therefore, these are separate investigations. They could be connected. They may not be.

- Teams were dispatched to each, separately, to do more advanced testing to identify the hazard. By the time they got there, all appears to be fine with the water. Whatever it was, is gone. Neither investigation has figured out what the initial issue was yet.

So without answers, and a public demanding answers, they say the facts as they know them. Which are laid out above. We still don't know what caused the fish kill. We still don't know what caused the water alarm in the barracks. The two systems are not supposed to be connected and are thus being treated as separate incidents and separate investigations. You may think it's likely that they are connected, given similar times and places. And that's fine, you can think what you want. They can privately think that's likely as well. But without evidence that they are connected, authorities cannot make a claim that they are. Different authorities are investigating each, and this woman's job is to investigate the barracks issue, not the Letort. That's who the reporter interviewed, and that's her given task, so she quite rightly tells the reporter the Letort fish kill is being treated as separate and she's focusing on the barracks. And what she knows is that an alarm was triggered, and that alarm doesn't tell them exactly what was in the water. They suspected gas, but when they got there and did more testing, the water seems to be fine. They are checking their monitoring system, and trying to figure it out.

If I had to guess. Purely a guess, nothing more. I'd guess that an underground gas pocket burst and came up through the rock and soil in that area. Probably methane, but could be radon or something as well. Natural phenomena, drilling related? I dunno. But pressurized gas got into the underground pipes as well as a spring in the area, and caused both. Upon reaching the surface it bubbled out of the water quickly and was gone before any further testing could identify it. And any investigation looking for a surface related pollution incident is doomed to fail. Best hope of seeing it would be seismic signals, as it likely caused minor tremors. But, in a populated area like that, on a near surface tremor, it'd be hard to separate any signal from the noise of things like trucks driving by.

I say that because I'm not involved and allowed to speculate. The investigators don't have that luxury.
 
Does the War college own/manage both sides of the affected branch of the stream? From the map displayed it appears the one bank looks residential so could point to herbicides or pesticides. If it was described as a strong chemical smell that sounds more likely than gas.
 
What caused the fish kill on Donegal Creek a while back?

At the time everyone was saying "Wait and see." Well, it's been a few months now. What caused it?
 
troutbert wrote:
What caused the fish kill on Donegal Creek a while back?

At the time everyone was saying "Wait and see." Well, it's been a few months now. What caused it?

Nothing found with tests >

https://lancasteronline.com/news/donegal-creek-fish-kill-remains-a-mystery-after-tests-fail/article_1290e02c-7e50-11e9-92b0-3b2bc489e38a.html

 
I believe the barracks incident was separate from the fish kill based on the press release. The military spends hundreds of millions a year remediating sites. This is so minor, they have absolutely no reason or incentive to hide anything in this situation.

Here's something googled quickly.

https://www.propublica.org/nerds/data-get-an-inside-look-at-the-department-of-defense-struggle-to-fix-pollution

There is more money than ever being spent on environmental remediation work in this country, both public and private. And the majority of remediation work now is geared towards remediating impacted soil or sediment vs hazardous soil or sediment (because most of the largest hazardous sites i.e. love canal have already been remediated).

But that's not what you'll see in the media, it's much easier to talk about global warming or carbon credits or paper straws.
 
Im sorry to hear about this hate to hear about fish kills.
 
It's not unusual to not discover the cause of a pollution-related fish kill. The trail is often cold from the get-go and sometimes it doesn't track back to anything that can be identified as a possible source. As for the comment about residences, while one would logically think that residential areas would often be areas where fish kills occur, that seems to happen rather infrequently.
 
Conspiracy and government cover-up theories aside, Mike pointed out that such poisonings aren't always easy to track down. Often, like back in the early 1980s, it is the result of an accidental spill (in that case at the old cress farm). In this case, it could have come from any number of sources only to dissipate before anyone even knew the trout had been killed. I asked about bridge construction early in this thread because a lot of times a range of chemicals are on site and sometimes they spill. It can happen even if people are being careful and following all the regulations.

This isn't a particularly satisfying answer when my gut reaction is someone needs to be held accountable, but sometimes bad things happen and, while a cause can be found, there's not necessarily anything that will easily improve the situation. Fatal car accidents are a good example.

Then again, there are times when a sinister act is to blame. Years back down here in Maryland a construction project got held up because there were wild trout in a creek. Someone affected by the delay got angry and dumped some toxin in the creek, killing all the trout. No trout, no reason for the delay. And it was never possible to prove exactly who did it.

While I'm far from naive about the reality that people will try to cover their tracks when they act in a less than noble way, I also understand that stuff happens and the investigation of a trout kill doesn't rise to the level of some of the other societal evils that need to be investigated by the authorities.

It would be nice to have an answer because even if it was the result of an innocent error (like someone doing yard work and leaving a bag of Sevin too close to the creek), it might help prevent the same from happening again. But at this point, I'm not holding my breath because the more time passes, the less likely there is to be a resolution.
Regardless, it's a damn shame. I hope the recovery is a speedy one.
 
Susquehanna wrote:
Good Luck.

You cant trust the PFBC or gubment to make a fishing license [d]tax[/d] increase.
But you dont think this sounds fishy?

How does a half foil hat fit? Tilt?

The guberment is not increasing the price of a fishing license. Guberment can be voted out. It's those that can't be voted out that's increasing the price of a license. Guess you didn't get that earlier. It's really nothing more then the very basics of the constitution.

No I don't see anything fishy in a comment made to the media. I'll wait for the official report generated by experts after an exhaustive search for answers over a sound bite given to satisfy the media's story deadline. determining what happened will take time.

At least wait till the incident has been properly tested and evaluated and a correct assessment issued before jumping to foul play and cover up. Wow, that's a crazy thought isn't it.

 
Sorry to see and hear about this. A mistake, seems mistakes are being made on more of a frequent nature. As fishermen we care and I am sure lots of people care. The problem exists with all those that "do not care". The heavy hand of progress has always dealt us aces and eights. The dead mans hand! The heavy hand is about to deal again. This time they have targeted the "Clean Water Act". Revisions are in the works.


These happenings in Pa. are a minute reminder of the huge happenings to begin in Massive Pristine Waters!


Let's just take a look at one! Pebble Mine, Bristol Bay, Alaska! Far, far away. Really, far away. Funny thing, you could walk there, it could take a year to get there by walking. So, in reality, is it really that far. The heavy hand can reach it in seconds.


Everything bad is always near water! Guess the water is needed to wash the evil away!


Maxima12
 
troutbert wrote:
What caused the fish kill on Donegal Creek a while back?

At the time everyone was saying "Wait and see." Well, it's been a few months now. What caused it?

Too many "it wouldn't do any good, ultimately, to find out the source", "we have to work w/ the land owners", etc. I knew RIGHT AWAY that they weren't going to tell us the source of that fish kill.
 
The_Sasquatch wrote:
troutbert wrote:
What caused the fish kill on Donegal Creek a while back?

At the time everyone was saying "Wait and see." Well, it's been a few months now. What caused it?

Too many "it wouldn't do any good, ultimately, to find out the source", "we have to work w/ the land owners", etc. I knew RIGHT AWAY that they weren't going to tell us the source of that fish kill.

Xackly. The trib they traced it to is very small and runs right through only one or two farms from what I see. Lancaster farmers are a powerfully connected group and I knew they wouldn't say what happened.
 
Aquatic systems are very unique there is so much chemistry happening, there may be a cause that appears to be the smoking gun gun however it then has to be proven to be the cause of death. If there's a quick flush of chemical unless someone pulls a water sample within seconds of the incident, having water chemistry to support an investigation is nearly impossible. Some chemicals/ nutrients can interact with various types of bacteria and algae to create short periods of anoxic conditions or a spike in pH etc. There is are many more variables than most will ever realize. I do not know any specifics of either case, but enforcement action can be nearly impossible to pursue without clear scientific proof of the cause of the kill.
 
Since the Letort fish kill I’ve been doing some research on the projects currently taking place near Carlisle, and I came across this horizontal pipeline drilling that got approved just a few months back by the DEP that will be going across the Letort.

Does anyone know the current status of this project?


http://files.dep.state.pa.us/ProgramIntegration/PA%20Pipeline%20Portal/MarinerEastII/HDD_Reevaluation_Reports/LetortSpringRunCrossing/Letort%20Spring%20Run%20Crossing%20-%20PA-CU-0136.0002-WX-16.pdf
 
I’m pretty sure that’s the pipe that crosses (far underground) just upstream of I81.
 
Not sure why, but only the first few pages loaded for me when I first saw this pdf. I’m able to now read all 70 some pages and this was apparently completed last August. On page 25 there is an aerial view of exactly where the pipeline was installed.
 
DEP has issued a notice of violation to Carlisle Borough. Details at

https://cumberlink.com/news/local/communities/carlisle/dep-serves-carlisle-borough-notice-of-violation-in-letort-spring/article_b037ca2b-c0b7-5e4c-91a9-5ac5d05d2601.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=email&utm_campaign=user-share
 
Update

https://paenvironmentdaily.blogspot.com/2019/08/dep-issues-borough-of-carlisle-notice.html?m=1
 
Were the fish killed by the sewage or the chemical?
 
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