LEWISBURG, W.Va. — Observations on Anthony Creek in Greenbrier County revealed no negative impact on fish in the wake of a diesel fuel spill. Although the accident on the Greenbrier River tributary forced the shutdown of the Lewisburg water treatment plant, it doesn’t appear to have created a fish kill.
“You never know for sure what all the impacts are, but we didn’t find any dead fish on Anthony creek from the spill site all the way down to the Greenbrier River,” said Mark Scott, District Fisheries Biologist for the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources. “My assistant was up there and surveyed the creek and even saw some live fish in Anthony Creek. Hopefully as far as fish are concerned we dodged a bullet.”
Scott added they’ve received no reports from the Department of Environmental Protection or anglers and paddlers on the Greenbrier of any problems.
Every incident carries the potential to be a crusher to the aquatic population, but a spill doesn’t necessarily mean an immediate death sentence to a stream.
“There’s a lot of factors. Diesel fuel will for the most part float on the top unless it gets emulsified and gets down in the water,” said Scott. “We had a diesel spill over on Elkhorn Creek a few years ago and it did kill some trout, but not near as many as everybody thought.”
Scott said he and his office would keep a sharp eye out for any potential problems. He doubted the spill posed any more risk downstream as the material dissipated into the Greenbrier, New, and ultimately the Kanawha and Ohio Rivers.
“When the truck wreck happened, we were getting a lot of precipitation. The creek, and the Greenbrier and New River, were coming up really quickly,” said Scott. “Looks to us like it flushed out pretty quickly.”
Anthony Creek is a popular trout fishing stream in the area which is regularly stocked by the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources trout program. The next stockings aren’t scheduled until next week.
“Right now we are evaluating and monitoring the stream conditions,” said Tom Oldham with the Cold Water Fisheries Division in Elkins. “We’ll make a determination later on whether to delay the stocking.”