What's killing the fish?: Rotarian looking for answers and clean-up of Waterford River
The Waterford River is seeing dead fish and lots of trash in its waters.
Wednesday brought the second occurrence of dead fish this month. The first incident was due to a water main break in Mount Pearl, but the second cause has not yet been identified.
"Now, two weeks later, you have another kill and this time there's no water main break so that puts in a bit more doubt [about] the conclusion from the first kill," Sandy Roche, chair of the Waterford Valley Rotary Club, told CBC Radio's St. John's Morning Show.
"From all that I can hear from talking to the people who are involved in this, the one thing that seems to be consistent is that the fish themselves...they are being killed by chlorine. Now the issue is, where is the chlorine coming from?"
Cleaning up the River
Roche said his rotary club has been involved with the Waterford River — which spans St. John's, Mount Pearl, and Paradise — for years.
"The Waterford Valley wouldn't be a valley if it wasn't for the Waterford River," he said.
"So it's only natural that our club focus on the Waterford River. It's always been our main concern."
Roche said volunteer-driven cleanups don't really help since volunteers are told not to get in the water for safety reasons.
"You don't want people getting hurt or drowned even."
But Roche wonders how municipalities expect to have the river cleaned if people have to stay out of the water.
Recently, he and two other rotarians got in the river to pick up trash.
The youngest of the three men is 62.
Roche said their adventure proved how contaminated the river is.
"...Three old fellas go in the river for four hours and we fill up a pickup [truck]," he said.
Among the trash Roche and company retrieved were shopping carts, construction materials, a desk, a table and oil drums.
Roche said four students involved in the Waterford River clean-up walked the river from the mouth to Bremigan's Pond with a GPS, camera and a notepad.
They catalogued more than 230 locations where the river had significant debris..
Municipality responsibility
Roche gave credit to Mount Pearl Mayor Randy Simms for leading an initiative to get the river healthy.
According to a release from the City of Mount Pearl, the three municipalities are committed to making the Waterford River the province's cleanest urban river.
"The main thing that this river needs, far and away the most important thing, is for the three councils — Paradise, Mount Pearl, St. John's — to come together with this study they're doing, to use that as the basis to come up with an overall watershed management plan for the river that they all buy into and that they enforce in a common manner," Roche said.
