No Life Expected In At Least 7 Miles
DEP: Number Of Aquatic Insects On Driftwood Branch 'Relatively High'

Cameron County Watershed Specialist Jim Zoschg pulled a small crayfish from Portage Creek near Emporium. Three others were found dead at the site. Although it was one of very few living creatures Zoschg found, he was still encouraged, having presumed that nothing had survived. Still, he noted that crayfish are hardy and can tolerate significant fluctuations in water quality better than many aquatic organism, particularly fish.

State biologists believe that the fish kill resulting from a chemical spill that found its way into the headwaters of Portage Creek numbered in the "tens of thousands" and stretched for at least 7.5 miles down stream from the site of the crash.

Experts from the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and its Fish & Boat Commission (FBC) spent much of their work week in Cameron County, sampling the waters of Portage Creek and the Driftwood Branch of the Sinnemahoning River, the larger stream into which Portage Creek flows.

DEP is the agency that enforces Pennsylvania's environmental laws and in this case is particularly collecting evidence from the stream's benthic layer. The FBC, meanwhile, is focusing its investigation on the fish kill.

"The impacts to fish and therefore sportfishing are substantial," said FBC Executive Director Doug Austen. "Our job at this point is to measure the impact in a deliberate, scientific fashion, which will give us the information needed for both recovering damages and (for making) future fisheries management decisions."

According to a DEP press statement released Thursday morning, "preliminary results of these biological assessments show essentially no living aquatic insects downstream from the spill site for approximately 7.5 miles. Samples collected near Four Mile Run and in Emporium, however, did show living organisms, but the stream was significantly impaired compared to background data. Assessments completed below the Driftwood Branch found the numbers of aquatic insects to be relatively high.

The FBC has not released information on the fish kill.

The fish were both suffocated and burned as a result of a wildly elevated pH level that occurred when 42,000 gallons of sodium hydroxide leaked from three tanker cars of a crashed train near Gardeau in neighboring McKean County.

Crash took place on Friday, June 30 on a stretch of tracks about two miles outside of Cameron County, between Route 155 and the tiny, highquality Portage Creek. For reasons yet determined, a Norfolk Southern freight train crashed hard, causing three tanker cars to burst and leak their contents into tiny Big Fill Run, a mountain tributary of Portage Creek.

The chemical wiped out all plant matter in its path for the first several hundred yards as it traveled across a flat, marshy wetland, essentially as a small wave.

The stretch of Portage Creek that has been polluted was listed as a Class A trout waters stream before the spill.