Volunteer Fishing Enthusiasts Look for Unknown Trout Streams and
Test Water Quality
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
10 April 2011
By John Hayes
In some Pennsylvania watersheds, the only thing separating Marcellus
Shale drilling crews from a fortune underground could be brook trout.
Tomorrow in Harrisburg, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission will
vote on the designation of 98 streams statewide as Naturally
Reproducing Wild Trout Waters, following the recent discovery there of
trout populations, some by volunteer anglers working in a program that
trains them to do stream surveys.
The Wild Trout designation would trigger further state Department of
Environmental Protection testing and possible issuance of land use
restrictions in those watersheds that could limit development,
including drilling.
Sixteen of the small streams and tributaries recommended for protection
are located in Westmoreland, Fayette and Somerset counties. One more is
in Cambria.
As more than 800,000 Pennsylvania fishing license holders prepare for
the opening of trout season on April 16 in most of the state, some
angler volunteers are searching vulnerable waterways for unrecorded
trout colonies, or charting baseline water conditions in Marcellus
drilling zones that could be used for reference in potential pollution
emergencies.
John Arway, executive director of the Fish and Boat Commission, said
the water monitoring is not intended to thwart gas drilling -- it's a
means of conducting "necessary research in tough economic times," and
couldn't be done without help from citizen scientists.
"We don't have enough eyes and ears out there. I don't have enough
biologists to monitor all of the water that we need to check to protect
the resource," he said.
Two separate volunteer water-monitoring projects with roughly the same
goals are under way in Pennsylvania. One is run by Fish and Boat, the
other by Washington, D.C.-based Trout Unlimited, a nonprofit cold-water
conservation group with chapters in Pennsylvania. The nascent projects
still lack focus and coordination in some areas, but the parallel
projects are to intersect later this year and become a volunteer-based
research tool of the Fish and Boat Commission.
Fish and Boat's five-year Trout Management Plan, launched last year,
calls on volunteers to provide data on 45,513 streams statewide that
have never been visited by the agency's biologists. Through the
Unassessed Waters Program, volunteer students and interns at Lycoming
and Kings' colleges in central Pennsylvania take a day of training
before heading out to headwaters and tributaries in specific watersheds
in search of several things -- most importantly, wild trout.
If Fish and Boat commissioners designate a stream section as Wild Trout
Waters, DEP staffers collect additional data on invertebrates and
determine if the waters will be classified a High-Quality Cold-Water
Fishery (which restricts development in the watershed) or Exceptional
Value Fishery (which mandates more stringent restrictions).
"Originally the program was designed to look at waters where urban
development growth was highest," said Dave Miko, Fish and Boat chief of
fisheries management, who wrote the state's Trout Management Plan.
"When the Marcellus Shale industry boomed, we re-prioritized those
waters with [potential drilling] activity, as well as urban growth
areas. ... These are waters we certainly want to go look at because we
feel those waters are most at risk of degradation."
Trout need cold water. In particular, Pennsylvania's official state
fish and only stream trout native to its waters, the brook trout
(Salvelinus fontinalis), thrives in about 54 degrees. Since the sealing
of many coal mines in the state, lots of small streams that 20 years
ago ran red or white with toxins are now healthy enough to attract
caddis, mayflies and brook or brown trout. The discovery of reproducing
populations of wild trout presents a clear and unmistakable indicator
of clean water, an invaluable resource.
Of prime concern to the Fish and Boat Commission are potentially
high-value cold-water tributaries that flow into warm-water streams or
rivers with lower water-quality ratings. The unassessed tributaries,
which potentially hold trout, currently get the lower classifications
and lesser protections of the waters they flow to.
The easiest way to prove fish are making babies is to identify the
presence of two year-classes of a species. Under the assessment
program, volunteers are trained in the use of electro-fishing devices.
"Find trout smaller than 6 inches long and 12 inches long in the same
place and you know you have multiple year-classes," said Mr. Miko.
"That means they're reproducing."
As part of Fish and Boat's Trout Management Plan, the Unassessed Waters
Program is funded through existing resources including grants, angler
licensing and permitting fees. Last year, the program's volunteers
sampled more than 65 waterways. Fifty-five percent contained
reproducing populations of brown or brook trout, prime indicators that
could trigger DEP involvement if the Fish and Boat commissioners change
those streams' designations tomorrow.
By next year, said Mr. Miko, the expanding program will work with nine
training campuses statewide, including the University of Pittsburgh,
Duquesne University and the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy.
Trout Unlimited takes a different route to the same destination.
Essentially a Washington lobbying firm funded through dues paid by
chapter
members, TU has no official position on Marcellus Shale drilling. But
with Pennsylvania's 52 chapters -- the largest state council in TU --
the regional issue has piqued the interest of the group's leadership,
which recently hired Dave Sewak of Windber, near Johnston, to
coordinate its volunteer-based water monitoring program, Coldwater
Conservation Corps. In southwest Pennsylvania, TU's Penn's Woods West,
Forbes Trail and Chestnut Ridge chapters participate.
Mr. Sewak, who worked on community conservation projects at the state
Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, visits the chapters
to explain the program and trains volunteers to use $300 monitoring
kits provided by TU national. Each kit includes a GPS unit for precise
marking of locations, pH strips for measuring acidity and alkalinity,
items for measuring and recording data, and one LaMotte Tracer Pocket
Tester, which measures temperature, conductivity and total dissolved
solids. Volunteers also take water samples that are analyzed at
Dickenson College in Carlisle, south of Harrisburg, for barium and
strontium, signature elements of hydraulic fracturing fluids used in
Marcellus Shale drilling. Volunteers are coached to bracket a drilling
location with samples taken upstream and downstream of the site.
It's not easy -- volunteers are required to return to the same sites
multiple times, log precision data and adhere to a rigorous data
collection protocol.
"Development is moving very rapidly, and the state just doesn't have
the wherewithal to keep track of everything, especially in rural
areas," Mr. Sewak said. "Our guys are trained to know the whole
[drilling] process. We put together a conservation success index based
on solid science. They'll be testing throughout the year and have a
real good idea of what the stream should look like."
It doesn't always work that way. Some volunteers say they wish they
were given more direction.
"There isn't much action guidance on this program," said Monty Murty of
Laughlintown, president of Forbes Trail Trout Unlimited of Ligonier. He
completed the Coldwater Conservation Corps training, and plans to begin
testing as soon as Westmoreland County creeks drop to normal levels.
"They leave it up to the chapters to identify the most risky sites for
Marcellus Shale impact," he said. "At our next meeting, Step 1 will be
to review maps in our area and prioritize sites to test baselines."
Nevertheless, he said, "It's good work. Something that has to be done."
Volunteer water monitor Sean Brady of Observatory Hill said he got
involved because he's "addicted to fly fishing." With a biology degree
and a background as assistant executive director at Venture Outdoors,
he's Riverlife Pittsburgh's development director and a Penn's Woods
West Trout Unlimited member. Having completed training, he sees the
Coldwater Conservation Corps as potentially useful, but says it remains
"very focused on the details, but kind of unclear on where they want us
to go and what to test."
That could change later this year. Bob Weber, head of Fish and Boat's
Unassessed Waters Program, said he's had discussions with Mr. Sewak on
bringing the citizen science programs together. "I'm going to use [the
TU program] to collect water samples in a lot of these streams, to help
me to prioritize where to send sampling crews, and Dave [Sewak] will be
the liaison between the Fish and Boat Commission and the TU chapters,"
he said.
Steve Forde, a spokesman for the Marcellus Shale Coalition, said he
wasn't aware of the details of the volunteer testing programs, but in
general the industry would welcome it.
"I think we have shown over several years we embrace added transparency
on a variety of levels," he said. "We are a highly regulated, highly
transparent and consequently highly sophisticated industry,
particularly when it comes to water quality."
Mr. Arway said he believes gas can be extracted from Marcellus Shale
without polluting water resources.
"Most operators," he said, "want to do this well and safely."
Forbes Trail Trout Unlimited members will choose assessment sites at
their next meeting, 7 p.m. April 20 at the Winnie Palmer Nature Reserve
in Latrobe, 724-238-7860.
John Hayes: jhayes@post-gazette.com