Valley Creek water main break

[afishinado]

moon1284 wrote:
Ignorant question, but if little valley was devastated, why not use this as an opportunity to stock heritage strain (or whatever you call them) st?

sarce wrote:
The environment there is too harsh for brookies because of the insane flash flooding. They tried to re-introduce brookies to the upper part of a tributary of little valley recently and that failed. There are also browns in that same tributary lower down, as well as in Little Valley upstream of the fish kill site.

I wouldn't do anything at all to "reintroduce" or stock Valley. Like others have posted above, the stream will recover and the brown trout will repopulate on their own.

I just wish there was some way to protect the stream from all these fish kills. It happens far too frequently there. Two incidents of chlorinated water kills and two or three sewage spills just in the last 8 or 9 years.

 

[salmonoid]

moon1284 wrote:
Ignorant question, but if little valley was devastated, why not use this as an opportunity to stock heritage strain (or whatever you call them) st?

They'd be muscled out by the browns, and the next water or sewage spill will be indiscriminate in which species of trout or char it kills?

 

[shadspoon]

We, Valley Forge Trout Unlimited, have been very involved with Valley since the mid 80's when they stopped stocking the stream. The trout have been able to recover from all that has happened. They will be back! What will eventually take Valley down is the storm water increase. It has already done considerable damage to the Little Valley population. The trout have no place to hide and grow larger. WE are very active in protecting what we have. This means spending lots of time and tens of thousands of dollars negotiating with developers and governments for the best management of storm water. So far we are winning! Pete Lee / AKA Shadspoon
PS, a thank you to Afish for making sense of all this!!

 

[Dave_W]

shadspoon wrote:
We, Valley Forge Trout Unlimited, have been very involved with Valley since the mid 80's when they stopped stocking the stream. Pete Lee / AKA Shadspoon

Pete,
Kudos to you and the good men and women of VFTU. I've long admired your chapter. Hang tough and keep doing what you're doing. We can't thank you enough.

 

[afishinado]

Dave_W wrote:

shadspoon wrote:
We, Valley Forge Trout Unlimited, have been very involved with Valley since the mid 80's when they stopped stocking the stream. Pete Lee / AKA Shadspoon

Pete,
Kudos to you and the good men and women of VFTU. I've long admired your chapter. Hang tough and keep doing what you're doing. We can't thank you enough.

Agreed. No doubt Valley Forge TU deserves a lot of credit for their hard work to conserve and preserve the wild trout in Valley Creek. Many take it for granted.

There is a constant battle to keep industry, development, major highway construction projects and runoff from destroying the stream ecosystem.

There have been fishkills and threats to Valley averaging one nearly every other year for the past few decades. And still the wild trout survive and even thrive.

Thanks to everyone at VFTU for their vigilance and hard work.

 

[moon1284]

The points against reintroduction of st make sense. I've only fished valley a dozen or so times and I agree it will rebound. Actually I agree with pretty much all of the posts on this topic.

 

[PhillyFlyFish]

Would "they" (not sure who decides) consider closing the stream? I'm guessing they will wait to see the total damage then make a decision? Just curious what it takes to get it closed and if it would help.

 

[Clams]

Any update on the situation at Valley Creek?

Will the creek be unfishable for the remainder of spring and summer?

What a tragedy.

Also... why was this thread moved from the main forum and buried here in the Conservation forum? Given that Valley is a major creek in the most populated part of the state, I would think this situation is one of the more newsworthy flyfishing topics in the state right now. I had to use the search function just to find the thread.

Thanks...

 

[Fredrick]

lestrout wrote:
Yo Phil

Not just to back NewSal up (I don't know him to my knowledge), but I just learned from Pete Hughes, Prez of VFTU, that investigation has revealed that Aqua was not the culprit for this latest disaster. The broken pipe belongs to a private party.

Aqua has a huge number of water mains and pipes to maintain, and they are indeed diligent about proactively addressing the breaks and in fact preventing some of them, not just reacting after the fact. Keep in mind that our area, like much of the Northeast, has infrastructure that our Founding Fathers didn't plan on keeping intact for lo these many (by American standards) centuries. Too bad the Romans didn't build all our infrastructure, judging by how durable their aqueducts and concrete have proven to be. (I'll pass over their use of lead urns for their wine). 😉

A big crew of DEP, VFTU, anglers, National Park Service, Treddyfin Township and other concerned and involved agencies and citizens have been working hard on this disaster.

Who is the private party ?

 

[AndyP]

Fred - I believe it was a fire line or fire sprinkler supply line that was part of an office complex. We had a similar situation happen a few years back when a fire line to a PECO sub station burst and there was a fish kill. The good thing was that PECO installed flow monitors on the line so that in the event of a leak or break someone would be notified and an alarm would go off in the future.

 

[tjsingle]

Wow that’s not good. I fished the creek on 4/27 and was not aware of the fish kill from the water main break. I did see several dead suckers, maybe one or two trout. I also observed that the stream seemed more clear of downed trees and branches that are typically there, but with the sudden rush of water that makes sense. I didn’t notice a difference in the fishing (9 fish caught), in terms of quantity of fish caught or presence of fish. I feel bad for even fishing that day unaware of what had happened....

 

[salmo]

TJSINGLE:

Interesting post. Did you fish below Chesterbrook in the park or did you fish upstream from there? As to the fish you did catch what size were they? I'm just trying to measure impact from the spill.

 

[tjsingle]

salmo wrote:
TJSINGLE:

Interesting post. Did you fish below Chesterbrook in the park or did you fish upstream from there? As to the fish you did catch what size were they? I'm just trying to measure impact from the spill.

All fish caught were downstream of the Chesterbrook section. Fish ranged from 4” to 12”. The majority were 6-8”. The largest fish was 12”, landed on a dry fly. Fishing appeared to be normal, however I did notice less fish in the sections I was fishing due to the changes in the stream structure such as downed trees being washed downstream, or so I thought at the time. If I had to compare the fishing to early April, I would say there was a noticeable difference in the amount of trout in the sections I fished, not necessarily the bite though. I will have to check out the stream now to see how it looks.

 

[salmo]

Good to know. Maybe the impact from the discharge will not be so great.

 

[Nymph-wristed]

Fishing fine in the park. Perhaps the good flows washed a lot of nonsense out. No big ones, but fish from 4 to 11 inches and a couple larger that chased a streamer but didn't commit. Any more updates on Chesterbrook?