Self-appointed Riverkeepers™, members of a national group called the Waterkeeper Alliance, say they plan to sue the owners of the North Fork Sheaffer System wastewater treatment plant. The letter says the plant can avoid a suit by cutting the discharges within 60 days.

The letter’s only local signer is Jeff Kelble —as the Shenandoah Riverkeeper™. A former river fishing guide; he’s also a citizen member of the Shenandoah River Fish Kill Task Force, formed after fish kills in the North (2004) and South (2005) Fork rivers.

A reliable sign of their intentions was the Riverkeepers™ splashy press release over the weekend, before they ever informed any of the people they’re threatening to sue. Another is to follow the shifting-sand politics leading up to this.

Kelble initially praised the Task Force as the “brightest fish pathologists, macroinvertibrate scientists, water chemistry experts, ag scientists, game managers and University researchers in the country.” Two months later he got the Riverkeeper™ position, assuring reporters he didn’t plan to leap into lawsuits. “I don’t want to be known as a litigator,” he said, but, he added, “I’m not going to back down if that’s what it takes.”

In mid-July, Governor Kaine met with state and local officials at Kelble’s Boyce Bed & Breakfast for a meeting on the fish kills. Two weeks later Kelble says he was no longer “waiting for the cause [of the fish kill] to be determined”; asking friends for money to “fund his work”.

And now, out pops a twenty-five page letter of intent-to-sue, full of legalese, including detailed wastewater plant records of the past five years, signed by Kelble, a Potomac Riverkeeper™, and a New York attorney.

Maybe it’s the influence of Kaine’s renege-itis rubbing off on him, but Jeff Kelble has been less than honest.

From the Task Force, Kelble was aware that whatever cause of the fish-stress and die-off problem is widespread. Over a four year period, it’s devastated the Potomac’s branches and Cacapon rivers in West Virginia, the North and South Forks of the Shenandoah in Virginia, and Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna River. That’s not the result of a Timberville wastewater treatment plant.

More telling, he knows –in fact it was he that reported it— the (lessened) North Fork fish deaths this year (2006) are between Woodstock and Strasburg in Shenandoah County; over 20 river-miles from Timberville.

If it’s true that this wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) discharged too much, it’s one of many other systems on the river with similar problems. DEQ has consent orders and implementation agreements with many other WWTPs in the watershed, and is currently working on arrangements to improve the Timberville WWTP. Even so, overages cited in the letter don’t precede or even correlate with any fish kills.

What’s ironic is that Kelble —by being on the Task Force— has access to riverine information not generally available; and all that information points away from this particular plant.

The fish kills were “not the result of an obvious cause such as a pollution spill. They were marked by a number of unusual characteristics: mostly adult – not young – smallmouth bass and redbreast sunfish were affected” and only a few fish of other species were killed.

If anything, these fish-kills appear to be triggered by rain! This leads to the premise that rainwater runoff is carrying an unknown toxin that injures these particular fish; a factor pointing away from any WWTP point of origin.

In the letter Kelble claims “Ammonia has been established by the Shenandoah River Fish Kill Task Force as one of the probable causes …” when they’ve concluded no such thing. The bottom line is that none of the facts, science, or scientists on the Task Force point to —or even implicate— this treatment plant.

The shame of Kelble’s media hype is the damage it does to real conservation.

The Task Force investigation has focused intense scrutiny on the Shenandoah and its tributaries, with positive results. Two years ago the only information available was flow volume. Today the public can read real-time discharge and gage height, water temperature, pH, electrical conductivity, and turbidity at Harriston, Luray, Strasburg, and Waynesboro.

Two years ago, only government officials were involved in environmental investigations. Today agriculture, industry, riparian landowners, anglers, academia, and citizen environmental groups from the Shenandoah watershed are involved. Even the discovery of intersex fish (yes Virginia, there are such things) in the state was a result of Task Force analysis.

Two years ago, river water was rarely sampled; mostly by volunteers. Today, comprehensive water sampling is done daily, with extra samples taken during rain periods. The Shenandoah River will be the best-understood waterway in America unless the process is stopped by Kelble’s “lawsuit solution”.

Whether or not Kelble’s successful with the suit, he betrayed the process he signed on to. In the public eye and according to the letter, the fish-kill source has been identified. It’s the WWTP in Timberville; so now the Task Force can be disbanded.

Never mind that we —including the brightest scientists— still have no clear idea what really caused these fish kills. Never mind this Task Force has done more good for the Shenandoah River than happened over the last decade. Never mind that there is a plan to track down and identify the cause of the fish kills.

Riverkeeper™ Kelble and his faithful steed New York attorney have saved the day and solved the mystery. Jeff Kelble owes his fellow Task Force members an apology.

Wednesday, August 16th, 2006 at 12:52 am.
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