EPCAMR

Scientist: Clear water was hiding deadly contamination

For 70 years, Paul Slusser lived along Catawissa Creek near Mainville, but he could never catch a fish in the stream, a friend recalls.

So about 10 years ago, Slusser visited the offices of the Columbia County Conservation District and asked how he could help get some trout back in the creek, said Mary Wagner.

Wagner, the district's manager, says Slusser's curiosity was the first trickle in what became a torrent of activity to clean the stream.

Slusser helped found the Catawissa Creek Restoration Association. He died in 1998.

But two months ago, another man made Slusser's dream come true.

Leonardo Zanolini, 73, dropped his line into the creek just downstream of the Zion Grove Bridge and came out with four native brook trout, he says.

They were all longer than 10 inches, he said. By their pink meat, he could tell they were not stocked fish. Farm-grown fish are gray inside, he said.

Zanolini was celebrated Saturday for his significant catch. He has lived near Zion Grove for five years, and he knew Catawissa Creek was barren of fish.

But he wanted to play around on the first day of trout season, he says, so he took a chance.

When he came home with his catch, his wife, Barbara Zanolini, 76, rolled the fish in flour and butter and fried them.

"They were good," Mr. Zanolini says, smiling.

Swimming-pool clear
The creek does not look like a polluted mess.

For years, people have remarked on how clear the creek's water is, like a pool, says Chuck Henry, a Beaver Township supervisor and a director of the restoration group.

But that clear water belied the stream's pollution, noted Steven T. Rier, a Bloomsburg University professor studying the creek.

The lack of muck meant nothing could survive in the acid water, said Rier, who serves in the department of biological and allied health sciences.

"It looked great," Rier said. "But there was very little living in it."

Rier, graduate student Jennifer Biddinger and undergraduate Roger Skull have started to look at the creek's water to track its cleanup.

They want to see how the stream will handle nutrients now that it is being cleaned.

Rier will not consider fish in his study. But Wytovich and Wagner hope to start a fish count to see if those numbers go up.

Filled with nutrients
Nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorous are bad for bodies of water, Rier explained. And they hit the Chesapeake Bay especially hard. That is where the creek's waters end up after a trip through the Susquehanna River.

Healthy streams keep a balance of nutrients, Rier said. The stream's plants and animals break those down before the nutrients get to larger waters, he said.

Until recently, Catawissa Creek had been passing along all of its nutrients, he said.

It is still too early to see changes, but Rier believes that the stream will start to hold on to the nutrients.

The acidity of the water also made it impossible for micro-organisms to live, Rier explained. Those tiny plants and animals form the bottom of the food chain, so animals bigger than them, like insects and fish, had nothing to eat.

That seems to be changing.

Can of worms
Supervisor Henry and his brother-in-law, Arnold Halye, say people have spotted trout, smallmouth bass and crawfish below the bridge outside Shumantown.

At Saturday's dedication of an acid runoff treatment system, several officials invoked the image of droves of fishermen seeking out the creek.

Now that the creek's prospects look good, they say, it opens a can of worms, say Henry and Halye. But they are so optimistic about the creek's recovery, that they're already banking on plenty of visitors.

They say the restoration group is trying to get small parking areas *enough for three or four cars * installed on private property along the entire creek. That will allow small groups to fish at many spots, they say.

They want to avoid the impact of large groups gathering at a few places, they said.

By Ben Timberlake

______________________________
Ben Timberlake
Staff Writer, Press Enterprise
ben.t@pressenterprise.net
phone: 570-752-3646
www.pressenterpriseonline.com


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