Spill Could Cost County Much Of Its $1.5 Million Annual Fishing Revenue

This is a valley where redwinged blackbirds balance on cattails and call across patches of lively marshes; a place where red-tail hawks hunt from high above the sounds of aquatic insects, amphibians and wetland birds.

It is mid-July and the sweet smell of over-ripe red raspberries stretches across the valley from their drier perch on marsh's edge.

A man-made column of earth and strange rocks towers above and on it, a railway, like a steel serpent, knifes its way through this vibrant ecosystem.

This valley is a picture of Pennsylvania beauty-

woodlands and wetlands, marshes; small country homes and thriving country gardens. If you love the outdoors, this is where you want to be.

Perhaps its most appealing resources, the cold clear waters of the Portage Sinnemahoning Creek, announces its presence with the subtle bubbling of its narrow course.

But when the serpent struck, that resource was essentially wiped out in an hour's time.

From a distance, it seems nothing has changed, but its rusty waters and orange stream bed tells a different story.

The 42,000 gallons (equivalent to the amount of water in an Olympic-size swimming pool), of sodium hydroxide that leaked from three crashed railcars and boiled its way through the valley, have turned this trout stream into an aquatic wasteland.

For as many as 7.5 miles below the crash site, according to Department of Environmental Protection biologists, not an organism survived.

The results of the environmental destruction will be felt in the local economy, as well.

One of the most valuable assets of the properties along Portage Creek is now a liability. And the affect on real estate could reach further, according to real estate agent Bryan Good, owner of Good Real Estate.

"Real estate values are most certainly going to drop on a lot of properties," he explained. "When people out of the area are shopping for local properties, they almost always want to know where the closest stream is and what the stream is like. That's going to be a tough question to answer for a while."

"There's never a good time for something like this to happen, but this is a particularly bad time," Good continued, noting that the real estate market, particularly those properties in quiet country settings, is doing well.

Local businesses will feel the crunch as well.

Fishing is without question the number one recreational draw in Cameron County, where an estimated $1.5 million is spent on the sport every year.

With fishing essentially not a factor on the Portage for the rest of this year and according to early F&BC predictions next year as well, Cameron County has lost a great deal of its allure as a top fishing draw. Add in the damaged areas of the Driftwood Branch, the damage to which is still being determined, and fishing revenue in the county is in serious question over the next several years.