A year after the biggest fish kill in state history on the Ogeechee River in southeast Georgia, more dead fish were discovered this week on the river, prompting two counties to advise people not to swim and fish in the stream.
The number of fish found dead is less than 20. Last year about 38,000 fish were found dead along 70 miles of the Ogeechee below the discharge pipe of textile company King America Finishing, near Statesboro.
Georgia Environmental Protection Division and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency investigators blamed last year’s big kill on the bacterial disease columnaris, which attacked fish that were weakened by high temperatures, pollution and low stream flows.
EPD spokesman Kevin Chambers said Friday the agency began investigating after it was alerted earlier this week that five dead fish were found in the river. Chambers said the dead fish are about two inches long. Some have white spots, which may indicate columnaris, he said. The fish are being tested at Auburn University and results of those tests may not be available until next week.
Chambers said EPD investigators dispatched to the scene tested the water and discharge of King America Finishing and found nothing out of the ordinary. He said the river flow is even lower now than it was during the big kill of May 20, 2011. The current flow was about 70 cubic feet per second. Adequate flow is about 127 cubic feet a second, he said.
Dianna Wedincamp, head of the Ogeechee Riverkeeper, said Friday she was not surprised more dead fish have been discovered because her group's testing of the water has found ammonia levels are too high and toxic below the King America Finishing plant discharge pipe.
“It’s not a matter of if we will have another fish kill, but when,” Wedincamp said. The small number of dead fish found this time is not an indicator of whether the water is less toxic than it was last year, she said, but rather an indicator that the river has yet to recover from last year's big kill even though the state restocked the stream last fall.
“The number of fish that have been killed is small because there are almost no fish left to kill in the river,” said Wedincamp, who said two of the fish her group found this week were near the King America Finishing discharge pipe.
Although the EPD and EPA concluded the fish were killed last year by bacteria, EPD director Judson Turner said in a letter last January to Ga. Senator Jack Hill (R-4th District) that EPD had "traced the problem to King America Finishing," which for years had been discharging wastewater from its fire-retardant fabric production line without a permit.
EPD shut down the KAF line for about a month last summer, and levied a $1 million penalty against the company. As part of a consent order EPD entered with the company last September, EPD allowed KAF to to continue to discharge into the Ogeechee if the company upgraded its wastewater treatment and expanded the monitoring of its own discharge.
Wedincamp's group, which has since regularly tested the water near the KAF discharge pipe, claims the company is still dumping unacceptable levels of pollutants into the river and it still does not have a legal permit to discharge from the fire-retardant production line. The Ogeechee Riverkeeper sued the EPD last year, challenging the consent order.
An administrative law judge ruled in March the group did not have the legal standing to sue. Last month the group appealed that ruling in Bulloch County Superior Court. A hearing is schedule for July 9. The EPD is holding a public hearing on the company's discharge permit, on June 12, at 7 p.m., at Effingham County High School in Springfield, Ga.
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