THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, August 5, 1995 TAG: 9508050308
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY BETTY MITCHELL GRAY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
North Carolina environmental officials are investigating whether Virginia Power Co. violated its agreements with the state by cutting the flow of the Roanoke River before a massive fish kill.
The chief of the state's water planning division, John Sutherland, said Friday that staff members are trying to calculate whether the power company violated dissolved oxygen standards that are part of its contract.
The contract with the state regulates use of dams along the river to generate power.
"We're in the process of checking that out," Sutherland said. "At this point we don't know for sure whether they have violated anything."
The problem on the Roanoke River began last week after the flow of water from U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' dams began to fluctuate.
At the request of Virginia Power, the Corps increased the flow from the dams to stabilize water levels in Lake Gaston and other nearby lakes, which sent water into wetlands and swamps along the river. Then the Corps reduced the flow sharply, from 18,000 cubic feet per second to 2,000 feet per second.
The fluctuations could have drained the wetlands and swamps of nutrient-rich water, contributed to a drop in dissolved oxygen on the river and led to the fish kills, state officials have said.
If Virginia Power did not violate its agreement with the state, North Carolina officials say, the state will work to include such situations in the company's relicensing agreement.
Preliminary talks in the relicensing process for the North Carolina dams are under way, Sutherland said.
Officials with Virginia Power Co.'s corporate offices in Richmond, Va., did not return telephone calls Friday.
State fisheries officials and local fishermen are upset because Albemarle-area fishermen will apparently have to bear the brunt of the deaths of thousands of striped bass along the waterway. They want changes in the way state and federal agencies and Virginia Power Co. manage the Roanoke River.
"It's certainly not a good thing. It's something that should not have happened," said state fisheries Director Bruce L. Freeman. "We can't continue to operate like this."
Commercial fishermen in the region are concerned about the effects of the kill on the fall fishing quota for striped bass and about taking the blame for a condition in the fishery that is not their fault.
"Our local representatives and our political people are going to have to make these people do what they're supposed to be doing instead of ignoring the problem," said Ricky Nixon, an owner of Murray Nixon Fishery near Edenton.
The Albemarle Fisherman's Association will meet at 6 p.m. Aug. 24 at Nixon's restaurant near Edenton to elect board members and to talk about the effects of the fish kill, Nixon said.
"It's a bad situation and there's nothing that we can do about it, but we're the ones that are going to have to pay for it," Nixon said.
Experts with the Division of Marine Fisheries and the Wildlife Resources Commission estimate that between 6,000 and 8,000 fish, at an average of about four pounds each, were killed.
That's almost the equivalent of the entire fall season quota for the Albemarle Sound Management Area for commercial and sports anglers.
Fisheries managers are also concerned about the effects of the fish kill - just one week after the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission approved the state's striped bass management plan - on the long-term recovery of the state's striped bass stocks.
"One of the repercussions of this is that the recovery, at the very least, will be delayed," Freeman said. by CNB