Shenandoah fish kills cause roiling on river

FRONT ROYAL, Va. —Few American waterways evoke as much passion, poetry and song, and memories of days gone by as the Shenandoah River, which flows north for 150 miles from Virginia into West Virginia to join the Potomac at Harpers Ferry.

But these days, not much is right with the historic waterway.

In the past several years, dreadful things have happened to this priceless beauty Virginians claim as their own. Fish have been found dead or dying, some suffering horrendous body sores, others simply floating dead with no outward signs of illness.

Despite the small army of investigating scientists, government officials and concerned conservation and sport fishing groups, no one yet has come up with answers regarding the causes of the fish kills.

Perhaps there is no single answer to the river’s plight, but whatever ails the Shenandoah almost certainly was — and still is — caused by man.

A kaleidoscope of answers about what is happening to the river is easy to come by: Opinions are as plentiful as the people who live along the Shenandoah from New Market and Front Royal to its eventual confluence with the Potomac at Harpers Ferry.

Robert Brent of the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) knows of the many pollution complaints, and he agreed that pinning down the causes isn’t easy.

“There are a number of different problems on the river,” he said. “There’s a bacterial impairment on both the north and south forks that concerns fecal bacteria, which exceed state standards. In addition, the south fork has aquatic-life impairment concerning the biological health of the stream. The south fork is not fully supporting aquatic life.”

Around the public Riverton boat launch along the Shenandoah’s north fork, within shouting distance of Front Royal, small tufts of a foamy substance float toward the West Virginia border, accompanied by malodorous strands of darkly colored, dead grass.

Front Royal angler Dick Fox said, “Ten years ago, it wasn’t unusual to catch 100 smallmouth bass in a day. Now you’re lucky if you hook a dozen. I think this river is sick. There definitely is something wrong here.”

All the same, on a sunny weekday Mr. Fox managed to coax well over 20 smallmouth bass to the hook — all of them appearing healthy, but none measuring over 15 inches. In the past several years, many of the bass that contained deep sores had been the larger specimens of smallmouth.

The state’s scientists haven’t isolated a single culprit as the cause of the river’s illness. As happens with many rural rivers, shoreline over-development, out-of-date sewage-treatment plants, occasional waste discharges, runoffs of sewage, fertilizers and animal waste that end up in the river contribute mightily to undesirable nutrients and the potential of contaminating ground and surface waters.

With all this being fairly common knowledge and the state’s DEQ having been aware that the river was ailing as far back as 1996 — when it listed it as “impaired” — some people question why it has taken the DEQ so long to investigate the Shenandoah River forks’ apparent illness.

Mr. Brent knows the river’s condition is a human health concern. “There are 650 impaired waters on the DEQ’s original list. We plan to address all 650 by 2010,” he said. The Shenandoah is only one of those ailing 650.

Among the private citizens and groups that are greatly alarmed — including the Friends of the Shenandoah River, the Shenandoah Riverkeeper and others — there is a fear that anyone who gets the river’s water into the mouth, eyes or nose runs the risk of contracting gastrointestinal illness.

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