Touring Crabby Creek with Congressman Jim Gerlach

This guest blog was written by Katy Dunlap.  Katy is the Eastern Water Project Director for Trout Unlimited and works primarily in Pennsylvania and New York.

Today, Valley Forge TU Chapter members took Congressman Jim Gerlach (6th District, Pennsylvania) to visit two sites on Crabby Creek—a tributary to Valley Creek—where the chapter has worked with countless partners over the past five years to restore the stream channel for trout habitat and address stormwater runoff downstream. 

Just northwest of Philadelphia, the Crabby Creek watershed is a major tributary to the 23-square mile Valley Creek watershed which is designated as an Exceptional Value and Class A Wild Trout watershed, the two highest water quality and biological designations that a stream can receive in Pennsylvania. Yet, despite its high quality, the Valley Creek watershed has been plagued with excess stormwater runoff and sedimentation, flooding, stream bank erosion, and channel scour, affecting the hydrology of the stream as well as its naturally reproducing population of wild trout. Crabby Creek has been one of the main stormwater-contributing culprits and more work is needed to restore the watershed.

The Crabby Creek project, like hundreds of other projects currently underway or being planned in the Delaware River watershed, could benefit greatly from passage of the Delaware River Basin Conservation Act (DRBCA). The DRBCA, co-sponsored by Congressman Gerlach, would create a voluntary, non-regulatory program in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to coordinate conservation and restoration activities in the Delaware River watershed and provide for a competitive grant program to help fund on-the-ground projects like the Crabby Creek project. We thank Congressman Gerlach for recognizing the importance of the Delaware River watershed and urge Congress to support the DRBCA and related restoration efforts.

Good fishin' and a bad bill

Last weekend, I attended the Keystone Coldwater Conference in State College, Pa. It was hosted by the Pennsylvania Council of Trout Unlimited and sessions focused on building partnerships, current research, and best management practices to ensure coldwater ecosystems are protected now and for future generations.

Attendees were from conservation districts, state agencies, Trout Unlimited chapters, watershed associations, and universities. Regardless of where they were from, I would consider most of the attendees to be doggedly devoted anglers, passionate about trout and the waters that sustain them. One attendee told me that after he retired, he moved from Pittsburgh to the Allegheny National Forest so he could fish every day for the rest of his life. Now that's love and devotion!

Stories of secret trout streams and recollections of taking a youngster “out fishing” for the first time were plentiful.  However, the conversation would change once someone began to read some of the papers on my exhibitor table. I had information concerning HB 1576 -- the bill that, if passed, will politicize a scientific process and change how state threatened and endangered species are designated. It also limits the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission’s ability to designate a class A wild trout stream and, as a consequence, these streams, which represent the best of the best for trout habitat, are left unprotected. 

Needless to say, this crowd of diehard anglers thought the bill was a bad idea and I urged them to speak up and contact their representative or write a letter to the editor -- and I’d urge anyone reading this to do the same. Everyone needs stories to tell about treasured and secret streams and the “big one” that got away.

Jennifer Quinn is central Pennsylvania outreach coordinator for PennFuture, based in Harrisburg.

Cleaning a Pocono stream

What's in the water??? PennFuture and Brodhead Watershed Association worked together on that question in a federal case involving a Pocono Mountains stream and a sewer plant discharge. The case was settled in 2012 -- and a recent editorial in the Pocono Record lauded the kind of work that will soon begin paying off for humans and trout.

In early 2012, PennFuture and the Brodhead Watershed Association (BWA) reached a settlement with the Mount Pocono Municipal Authority to resolve the federal lawsuit filed in late 2010 against the authority for more than 500 permit violations. The federal consent decree -- in layperson's language, the enforceable requirements -- gave the authority to a timeline to reduce its discharge of treated sewage to Forest Hills Run. This stream is designated as High Quality, a special classification that entitles it to enhanced protection. But because of the sewage plant pollutions, the stream was added to the state’s official list of impaired streams in 2002. The water temperature was so warm that it posed risks to trout and other aquatic life, and the temperature also contributed to growth of a particularly nasty substance called sewage fungus.

As part of the settlement, the authority will reduce the volume of its discharge by applying increasing amounts of the discharge to an area of land where vegetation and soils will filter out pollutants. It also agreed to protect a section of open land for a trail and greenspace.

PennFuture and BWA could have pursued millions of dollars in civil penalties for the violations at the sewage treatment plant, but instead worked with the authority and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to develop a remedy that will provide the greatest benefit to water quality, and to the people who enjoy the stream and its surroundings.  Learn more about our legal work behind the scenes to bring this about.

Kate Gibbons is northeast Pennsylvania outreach coordinator for PennFuture, based in Wilkes-Barre.