Runoff silt is a big problem!

[1wt]

I was watching Chesapeake Week tonight and the scientists said that the lower 3 Susquehanna dams have 250 million tons of runoff silt (with heavy metals and other crap)
The top two are full, but the bottom one still has another 5 years or so?
When a big flood came, this is what wrecked the upper half of the bay!
It will take them 10 years to dredge, but it has to be done!! Maybe they could drop the smelly sludge in Afghanistan?
The Susquehanna is already wrecked with all the nitrates, sewage, and drugs in the water system. All the bass have sores and are unisex-ed!
I remember all the bass in the clean gravel bottom river, now I'm afraid to wade in it. My, how it has gone downhill.

 

[glenrockonthefly]

When Capt. john Smith sailed up the Bay in early 1600's he could see the bottom in 30 feet or more of water and was amazed by how many oysters there were! Deforestaion, dams and modern agriculture have wrecked havoc on so many of our water-ways. it is a shame!!!

 

[Maurice]

An interesting point indicated in the Chesapeake Week documentaries indicated that one of the major contributors of the oyster demise was from over-fishing in the 40's through 70's and a parasite (japanese) called MSX. Apparently it was introduced from ballast water and from the trade relations after WWII.

The oysters filtered the waters of the bay for centuries and when their populations collapsed the great oyster reefs that raised the species off the chesapeake bay floor receeded to the floor and then were covered by the silt from the rivers upstream. The shear numbers of oysters were the filter of the bay.

There is some solace in the fact that the silt that the dams (including the hundreds or thousands of mill dams over the last 150 years) have held back the same silt that is believed to be killing the bay....She is lucky to have lived this long....perhaps she has PA to thanks rather than blame.

If the Japs hadn't introduced the parasite and the Maryland fishermen were not so greedy in their fishing efforts the bay might be fine with all our sediment in our TMDL's.

Bottom line is it was an ecosystem bound to collapse and extended by the very dams being blamed for its demise.


Interesting.

 

[1wt]

in the Chesapeake Week documentaries

Maurice,
Excellent documentary, I saw it twice! And even with the new plantings, the local watermen are already wrecking the new beds?
And the "fracking" problems in PA? Did you see the TU guy complaining about the fracking wrecking the trout streams?
MPT is usually wonderful. Check out "Outdoors Maryland" it is also wonderful TV.

 

[1wt]

Bottom line is it was an ecosystem bound to collapse and extended by the very dams being blamed for its demise.

Maurice,
I'm not sure about that? The MSX was like giving small pox blankets to the local Indians (or all the Hawaiian's we killed when we first went there)...... it killed most of them, way more than shot by the white man's guns! This "new world" was pretty un polluted and the original oysters weren't immune to the crap from the old world.
And it was over fished.
But the Susquehanna wasn't this filthy a hundred years ago. Even with no dams, the almost clean water would be not too much for the oysters to filter. Houses, roads, way too many people, pig and chicken farms, and worn out sewage plants wrecked the Susquehanna also. It's too many people!! ...... but you and I have kids, so we blame it on the Japs??

When I was a young guy, I lived in Cape May, NJ. Back then, this was the "weakfish capital of the world". Only 40 years ago, the Delaware had clean water coming down the bay. Now, with overpopulation and millions flushing their toilets in Phila, the outgoing tide is brown and smelly!!
I used to catch 12lb weakfish, sea trout, with metal spoons...... but those days are gone. Now lots of jelly fish and skates along the dirty Jersey shores. Not a oyster problem, just too many people and every square inch of sand has a building on it now!!

It's too many people!! The saltwater tuna and cod are in steep decline..... just like all the trout streams are!
7 billion is just too many people. Optimum would be 1 billion for this planet. What will happen, IMHO, is people with common treads, like Russians, US, Europe, and Canada will ban together and exterminate the rest of the world with a killer virus that won't wreck the plants and water.
It's a shame for some, not me, but the religious leaders could say that maybe this was the second coming?? God works in mysterious ways! Most could believe this??

"My God is better than your God"

 

[troutbert]

Posts made at 2 am are often entertaining!!