Fish &amp; Boat Board Urges Action on Susquehanna River Troubles

Harry Craig Green Retired Gloucester City Public School Teacher, WW II Army Veteran, Active in the Masonic Lodge

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Fish & Boat Board Urges Action on Susquehanna River Troubles

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Harrisburg, PA – Calling the Susquehanna River “increasingly impaired,” the board of commissioners of the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission (PFBC) today called on state and federal environmental agencies to expand efforts to determine the sources of pollution which are contributing to the demise of the river’s smallmouth bass fishery.

The board’s resolution, passed at its quarterly meeting, urges the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to step up their investigations, saying recent data confirms a serious problem exists. Commissioners cited evidence from a two-year water quality study coordinated by the U.S. Geological Survey and partially funded by the PFBC which found stress factors such as elevated water temperature and low dissolved oxygen concentrations during the critical May through July development period for smallmouth bass. The Commission contributed $400,000 to the study in an effort to discover the causes behind the fishery’s decline.

Problems were first detected in the middle reaches of the river in 2005, when PFBC biologists found unusually high numbers of dead or distressed smallmouth bass. They later determined that the affected fish were suffering from infections related to a common soil and water bacteria Flavobacterium columnare, or Columnaris. The disease is considered a secondary infection brought on by environmental or nutritional factors that stress fish, weakening their ability to cope with the bacterial agent. The same bacterium was discovered again in 2007 and 2008.

In other action, Commissioners:
· Approved a long-term lease agreement with Erie County’s Lawrence Park Golf Club to install fish passage structures at two impediments in Fourmile Creek to facilitate the movement of steelhead upstream. The structures will be funded with grants from DEP’s Coastal Zone Management Program and the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources’ Community Conservation Partnership Program.
· Authorized staff to pursue the acquisition of a public fishing access and conservation easement on the Little Juniata River that includes approximately 1,020 linear feet on one side of the river. The site is located along Barree Road in Porter Township, Huntingdon County, and the Commission stocks this portion of the river at a location on an adjoining property.
· Extended by about two-weeks the annual no-fishing period on two Crawford County nursery waters to provide greater protection for spawning walleyes. From March 1 to the first Saturday in May, fishing will be closed on Linesville Creek from the mouth upstream to the Conrail Railroad Bridge north of State Route 6 in Linesville and will be closed on Padden (Finley) Creek from the mouth upstream to Finley Bridge on State Route 6. Commissioners also renewed the nursery status on 11 waters and removed the status from nine waters.
· Approved a pass-through grant not to exceed $10,000 to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh to assist with the Monongahela River Monitoring Project, a multi-agency project coordinated by the Commission’s 3 Rivers Ecological Research Center. The project will repeat baseline studies conducted on the Monongahela in 2003 and will establish regular monitoring of aquatic resources of the river. The museum will process and identify all invertebrate samples which are collected.
A complete copy of the meeting schedule and the full agenda for the meeting can be found on the Commission’s web site at www.fishandboat.com/minutes.htm. The mission of the Fish and Boat Commission is to protect, conserve, and enhance the Commonwealth’s aquatic resources and provide fishing and boating opportunities.