Published Friday, July 27, 2007
Officials investigate Mills River fish kill
Times-News Online
State and federal officials are investigating a fish kill on the Mills River on Friday, which claimed hundreds of fish, including this redhorse found near the intersection of N.C. 280 and South Mills River Road.
Scott Parrott / Times-News
MILLS RIVER -- Contaminants flowed in the Mills River and its south fork Friday, killing fish and threatening an endangered mussel.
The type of contaminant and the source remain under investigation by state and federal authorities. Biologists warned the public to not eat or touch fish from the river.
The Mills River, which flows through western Henderson County, contains several species of fish, the endangered Appalachian elktoe mussel and drinking water intakes for Asheville and Hendersonville.
"You pretty much couldn't pick a worse river to have something like this happen," said Gary Peeples of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Asheville field office.
The fish kill began between Dalton Road and Old Homeplace Lane off South Mills River Road, said Roy Davis, an environmental engineer with the N.C. Division of Water Quality. The south fork courses through farm land in the area, which received heavy rain Thursday.
The Division of Water Quality collected water samples to test in Raleigh to determine the cause of the fish kill. The tests could take one or two weeks, Davis said.
People reported first seeing dead fish Thursday afternoon, Davis said. But the contamination could have occurred as early as Thursday morning, he said.
Hendersonville Utilities Director Lee Smith said regular sampling at the Water Treatment Plant showed nothing out of the ordinary in the city water supply.
The city is conducting more intensive tests at the intake and within the city water system that could take one week, he said. Hendersonville has a water intake on the Mills River about four miles downstream from where the contamination occurred.
"We're obviously concerned, but right now we're not throwing up any red flags," Smith said.
Biologists from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service searched the river Friday for the endangered Appalachian elktoe mussel. The mussel is only found in a few streams in Western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, including the Mills River.
"So far, the mussels that we're finding look good," Peeples said. "Unfortunately, mussels can have a delayed reaction to this kind of thing, so we'll have to keep an eye on things for a while."
Biologists planned to return Sunday to check the health of the mussels. If mussels die, the party responsible for the contamination could face federal charges for harming an endangered species, Peeples said. The state could also recover the cost of the killed fish from the responsible party, Davis said.
Pastor Steve Cooke found trout floating belly up Friday morning in the water behind Mills River Baptist Church on South Mills River Road.
"That's really a disturbing thing," said Cooke, who anxiously awaited word on whether the water would soon be safe.
Area churches use a pool behind Mills River Baptist for baptisms, and some were scheduled for Sunday. Cooke didn't know what the church would do.
Mills River resident Carl Hill and his son, Andrew, planned to fish the Mills River from N.C. 280 toward the confluence with the French Broad on Friday. Instead, they counted about 50 dead rainbow and brown trout as they floated down the river in a canoe, they said.
In 2000, 4.6 miles of the lower section of the Mills River was placed on the state's list of impaired streams. That came after researchers with the University of North Carolina at Asheville in 1997 documented a "dead zone" where sensitive aquatic organisms had been wiped out upstream of the river's confluence with the French Broad River.
The N.C. Clean Water Management Trust Fund awarded a $729,992 grant to help improve the river's water quality.
More than $329,000 of that money was earmarked to replace riverside pesticide mixing stations with state-of-the-art "agri-chemical handling facilities" developed by Mills River resident Bob Carter, then district conservationist for the U.S. Soil Conservation Service.
The Mills River Watershed Protection Project grew out of that effort. The group's efforts to clean up the river were recognized as a model by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and resulted in the river being removed from the state's impaired waters list.
Mills River Mayor Roger Snyder said he learned of the fish kill from his wife, and saw state and federal fish and wildlife officials gathered below the Davenport Bridge where N.C. 280 crosses the river while he was visiting the Valley Ag store to buy some corn Friday.
Snyder, 48, a Mills River native and member of Mills River Fire and Rescue Department, said this was the third time he can remember a spill in the river in all his years living in the valley.
"Years and years ago, probably 25, there was a milk tanker that wrecked on South Mills River Road right around Moore's Dairy. The fire department went down to the water treatment plant and had them shut it down. Then probably 20 years ago there was a small amount of pesticide that got into the river."
Snyder said the milk spill did not kill any fish while the pesticide spill resulted in "just a few (fish) killed."
The Mills River is a drinking water source for about half of Henderson County's residents who get their water through the Hendersonville Water Department, as well as a supplemental water supply for more than 100,000 customers of Asheville's water system. Both cities draw water from the section below the N.C. 280 bridge, although the Hendersonville system has supplemental intakes on Big Creek and Bradley Creek, Mills River tributaries in Pisgah National Forest.
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