THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, August 1, 1995 TAG: 9508010227
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY BETTY MITCHELL GRAY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 90 lines
State environmental officials are investigating a drop in dissolved oxygen over the last two weeks in the Roanoke River that has killed thousands of fish near Hamilton and led to the voluntary shutdown this week of the region's largest industry.
Scientists and environmental officials generally agree that recent heavy rains, high temperatures and low winds have combined to create low dissolved oxygen concentrations and fish kills on many coastal waterways.
But the recent problem on the Roanoke River could cost Weyerhaeuser Co. millions of dollars in lost income and could cause problems for the area's striped bass population, which had begun to recover from recent declines.
As low dissolved oxygen concentrations began working their way downriver last week, Weyerhaeuser Co.'s pulp and paper mill began closing down its operations at Plymouth late Friday and early Saturday, cutting off its wastewater discharge into the Roanoke River and shutting down its paper manufacturing operations to prevent further damage to the river, Marc Finlayson, a company spokesman said late Monday.
``We've taken the most dramatic step we can take to protect water quality downstream,'' Finlayson said. ``We just felt like we could not responsibly continue to operate.''
A condition of Weyerhaeuser's discharge permit requires the company to reduce or curtail its 40-million-gallon-per-day discharge into the Roanoke River when dissolved oxygen concentrations drop below 4 parts per million for more than 24 hours.
Finlayson said Weyerhaeuser's pulp and paper operations are likely to be idle for at least two more days.
And while nearly all the pulp and paper mill's 1,550 employees remained on the job Monday morning and afternoon, performing routine plant maintenance and housekeeping chores, company officials considered asking some of its employees not to report to work as soon as late Monday night.
``We're sort of at the mercy of what's coming to us from upstream,'' Finlayson said. ``It's sort of out of everybody's control.''
Weyerhaeuser Co. and Division of Environmental Management monitors began noticing low dissolved oxygen concentrations about two weeks ago along the Roanoke River near Hamilton, but the company and state officials became particularly alarmed on Friday when dissolved oxygen levels of about 2.5 parts per million wererecorded near the mill.
State water resource officials will meet this week with members of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to discuss whether increasing the flow from the corps dam at Roanoke Rapids will help dissolved oxygen concentrations recover, according to Debbie Crane, spokesman for the Department of Environment, Health and Natural Resources.
The state will also ask other industries along the Roanoke River to scale back or curtail their wastewater discharges to help the dissolved oxygen concentrations rebound, Crane said.
Other local officials are also expected to question whether a Corps of Engineers decision to reduce the water flowing from Lake Gaston from 18,000 cubic feet per second to 2,000 feet per second in recent days could have aggravated the river's problems.
Low oxygen concentrations have occurred in recent weeks in waterways along the central and northeastern coast.
Generally, fish become stressed when dissolved oxygen concentrations drop below about 4 parts per million.
Finlayson said the concentrations recorded by Weyerhaeuser monitors this week are the lowest seen in at least 34 years.
Dissolved oxygen concentrations too low to support fish are a chronic problem for many eastern waterways in the hot summer months when fish kills become a daily occurrence in some areas.
High concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus in the waterways can also contribute to algae blooms that consume oxygen and can further aggravate problems for the fish.
State fisheries officials, prompted in part by concerns over the striped bass population along the Roanoke River and Albemarle Sound, are expected to join Division of Environmental Management and Weyerhaeuser Co. officials on the river today to monitor dissolved oxygen concentrations along the waterway.
It's still too early to tell what, if any, long-term effects the oxygen problem will have on the region's striped bass population, said Harrel S. Johnson, manager of the Division of Marine Fisheries regional office in Elizabeth City.
Most of the young striped bass are concentrated in the Albemarle Sound and away from the worst of the problem areas, Johnson said.
``But this does cause me some concern,'' he said. ``If the dissolved oxygen has a significant effect in the Albemarle Sound, we could have some real problems.''
KEYWORDS: FISH KILL ROANOKE RIVER POLLUTION by CNB