CONSOL Settlement Likely to Help Rehabilitate Dunkard Creek

The settlement will go to the state Division of Natural Resources Aquatic Life Fund.

The State Journal
16 March 2011
By Pam Kasey

Dunkard Creek in Monongalia County likely will see some benefit from a $500,000 settlement announced March 14 between the state and CONSOL Energy Inc.

How and when the creek will benefit are not yet clear.

The settlement over damages to the natural environment related to the September 2009 kill of fish and mussels on 30 miles of Dunkard Creek will go to the state Division of Natural Resources Aquatic Life Fund, according to DNR Fisheries Biologist Frank Jernejcic.

"It is not necessarily earmarked for Dunkard Creek," Jernejcic said in the hours following the announcement, before the DNR had made plans. "I would assume much of it would have to go to Dunkard Creek, but we want to produce hopefully a measurable benefit."

Before the kill, Dunkard Creek was an active muskie and smallmouth bass fishery and supported the most diverse population of mussels in the Monongahela River drainage.

Over the period of a month in September 2009, salty discharges from CONSOL mining operations at the time of a drought led to a toxic bloom of non-native golden algae that killed fish, mussels and amphibians on the West Virginia Fork and mainstem of the creek.

Populations have begun to return, Jernejcic said.

"We were impressed with our sampling that we did in July (2010) of the number of species that we found," he said. "We essentially found the same number of species that we found before the kill."

They likely are returning from tributaries, he said.

Numbers of species is an important beginning to recovery, but not the only factor.

"We're not recovered because we're not there in the numbers (of individuals) and the biomass (total weight)," Jernejcic said.

"Now conditions have to be maintained to allow them to reproduce more successfully, and that's what we'll be monitoring over the years, so it's not just remnant populations."

CONSOL is required by another settlement to bring treatment for its discharges on line by May 2013. Until that time, the company has to time its discharges with higher flows to keep in-stream salt levels low.

A positive sign is that, according to Patrick Campbell of the state Department of Environmental Protection, weekly monitoring at multiple locations on Dunkard Creek has turned up no golden algae since January 2010.

Restoring fish populations will not be expensive, Jernejcic said. DNR stocked muskies and bass previously and will resume stocking as the forage minnows continue to return. The smallmouth population will build quickly, he said, and muskies within a decade.

Restoration of mussel populations is more a matter of multiple decades, he said, and this may be where some of the money is spent.

"The mussels, we can make an estimate of a million or two on that," in terms of the cost of full rehabilitation, he said, "but it depends on the procurement of the mussels. If we've got to raise mussels in a hatchery environment - and the time involved -- it can be really labor intensive."

An alternative approach would be to work, rather, on improving long-impaired habitat in the creek, he said.

The DNR will plan its approach in the coming days and weeks.