Two years since stream pollution

This past Monday marked the two-year anniversary of the train derailment and sodium hydroxide spill in Gardeau. The pollution caused heavy fish kills along approximately 30 miles of streams in the Sinnemahoning Creek watershed.

Cleanup was conducted. Then, nature was left to run its course.

Nature is quite resilient. After taking away inhibiting factors, such as pollution, natural systems will bounce back and in time be functioning back at their full capacity.

Invertebrate life and fish wiped out by the spill began re-colonizing the Portage Creek and Driftwood Branch from healthy tributaries and stream reaches unaffected by the chemical spill.

Although these streams still have several years before they fully recover, they are well on their way. To check Portage Creek, I decided to fish the stream below the chemical spill site on the anniversary date of the spill.

Hemlock boughs hung down over the stream, shrouding its riffles and pools. The logs of fallen trees created deep plunge pools and ideal trout habitat.

I imagined what it must have been like two years ago. The stream was teeming with life, microorganisms, bugs, baitfi sh, and trout. Then came the flush of pollutants.

I visualized the death, the stench of the sodium hydroxide, the tea-stained water and ugly yellow foam. It was sad to contemplate what had happened that day.

I fished upstream, using dry flies. There was no shortage of trout in the stream -- perhaps not as many as before the spill, but I was able to conjure up rises from most of the pools. In general, the brook trout I saw were small. They averaged about four inches and were probably last year's fry.

Just knowing that trout inhabited a stream that was completely dead two years ago made the trip worth the effort.

At the spill site, Norfolk Southern removed contaminated soil adjacent to Big Fill Run, the tributary from which most of the pollutants entered the water. The channel was reconstructed with cross vanes to provide stability and create plunge pools for habitat.

Wetlands were constructed, seeded with plants, sedges, and rushes.

A meadow was seeded with wildflowers. Willows and alder shrubs were planted. Swamp white oak seedlings were added to provide future shade canopy to the stream.

In time, and it will be diffi cult to find signs that there was a terrible chemical spill at this site. The forest will return; fawns will use the meadow for bedding cover. In April, choruses of spring peepers and wood frogs will sing from the wetlands.

Woodcocks will probe for worms and put on their springtime aerial displays. Brook trout will hide in the plunge pools.

The purpose of my trip was more to assure myself that these things were beginning to come to pass than to catch trout, so it was a success.