Fish die-off in creek puzzles local officials.Byline: Scott Maben The Register-Guard Eugene city officials don't know Don't know (DK, DKed) "Don't know the trade." A Street expression used whenever one party lacks knowledge of a trade or receives conflicting instructions from the other party. what killed about 150 fish in a section of Amazon Creek in west Eugene. The fish were found dead Thursday afternoon near the Terry Street bridge that crosses the creek west of Danebo Avenue. Investigators found no source of a toxic discharge or anything obvious that would explain the deaths, although a hazardous materials crew that responded to the scene first observed a degraded organic solvent in the water, officials said Friday. "It's a little bit of a mystery as to what exactly killed those fish," said Johnny Medlin, the city's parks and open space director. The city placed three booms in the creek to capture any pollutants pollutants see environmental pollution. that might be flowing downstream. An environmental cleanup The process of removing solid, liquid, and hazardous wastes, except for unexploded ordnance, resulting from the joint operation of US forces to a condition that approaches the one existing prior to operation as determined by the environmental baseline survey, if one was conducted. crew hired by the city was to skim the water above the booms and remove any contaminants by today. The state Department of Fish and Wildlife removed more than 130 of the dead fish along 600 feet of the creek. The count included 70 large-mouth bass, 27 carp, 12 bluegill bluegill: see sunfish. bluegill Popular game fish (Lepomis macrochirus) and one of the best-known sunfishes throughout its original range, the freshwater habitats of the central and southern U.S. It has been introduced throughout the western U.S. , 11 black bullhead The black bullhead, Ameiurus melas, is a species of bullhead catfish. Like other bullhead catfish, they have the ability to thrive in waters that are low in oxygen, brackish, turbid and/or very warm.[1]. , nine large-scale sucker and five pumpkinseed pumpkinseed: see sunfish. , fisheries biologist Kelly Reis said. "Those were just the ones we actually pulled out of water," Reis said. At least two dozen more dead fish were in the water Friday afternoon, Medlin said. Reis said she didn't know whether pathology tests would be conducted on samples from the fish. It's not unusual for a few dozen fish in the channel to die once or twice a summer, Medlin said. Sometimes it's due to the discharge of pollutants in the stormwater system, and sometimes algae algae (ăl`jē) [plural of Lat. alga=seaweed], a large and diverse group of primarily aquatic plantlike organisms. These organisms were previously classified as a primitive subkingdom of the plant kingdom, the thallophytes (plants that blooms in the water deprive the fish of oxygen, he said. TO REPORT If you ever see anything being dumped into a catchbasin or an open waterway in Eugene, city officials ask you to call the parks and open space division at 682-4800 or the police department's non-emergency number at 682-5111. |
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