Sunday, May 25, 2008
Lehigh making remarkable recovery
Mark Taylor
Mark Taylor's Outdoors column and notebook appears regularly in The Roanoke Times.
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LEHIGHTON, Pa. -- A steady stream of water is dripping from the hood of Dean Druckenmiller's rain jacket, dribbling into the two inches of standing water in the bottom of his Clackacraft driftboat.
As he pulls back on the boat's oars, Druckenmiller's expression is one of grim determination.
"I had a feeling it was going to be tough," he says of the fishing this wet and cold morning on the Lehigh River.
Three hours of hard effort have produced only about 10 smallmouth bass and two trout.
But Druckenmiller will take this over what was.
It wasn't too long ago that the Lehigh River was dead, polluted to the hilt by life-choking coal silt, among other things.
"There was nothing living in it," says Chris Kocher, who's in the boat with us that day. "It was described as a black lava river.
"It never caught on fire, but it probably could have."
Things began turning around in the 1970s after the passage of the Clean Water Act. And even though the Lehigh still isn't perfect -- poison chemicals leeching into the river from abandoned mines in the watershed remain an issue -- the recovery has been remarkable.
Having been briefed on the river by my friend and Allentown Morning Call reporter Christian Berg, who had invited me to the Lehigh Valley to speak at the Pennsylvania Outdoor Writers Association's spring conference, I was eager to get out and see the river.
Today, as the Lehigh flows big and boldly through the pretty rolling hills of Eastern Pennsylvania it boasts an ever-improving warmwater fishery anchored by smallmouth bass, and also a solid trout fishery.
Druckenmiller, who started fishing on the Lehigh in the 1990s, said he's seen progress each year.
"It's improved dramatically," says Druckenmiller, a full-time soil geologist who guides on the river part-time. "The most noticeable factor is the aquatic [insect] life."
The river boasts most of the major hatches one would expect to find on an Eastern freestone stream, and it's those bugs that lay the foundation for a healthy fishery.
A healthy river is not a good thing just from an environmental standpoint. It can also be an important cog in the local economy, especially in regions like this where those economies can no longer count solely on manufacturing to keep things humming
In fact, in that way the Lehigh has a lot in common with the Smith and Jackson rivers, two streams in Western Virginia that some argue have potential to be far more valuable as economic drivers than they currently are. (On the Smith River, radical flow variations from Philpott Dam are thought to stifle the trout fishery, while the Jackson's main hurdle revolves around access problems.)
Like big sections of the Smith and the Jackson, the Lehigh in this stretch is a tailwater, meaning its flow is controlled by a dam.
But when the Francis E. Walter Dam was constructed nearly 50 years ago fishing was not given a thought. How could it be when the river was dead?
The dam's primary function was flood control, a role it has served well. The water level in the reservoir, which collects water from a 1,345-square mile watershed, is kept low to help control downstream flows during heavy rain events.
In a move that helped boost recreation on the river, the Army Corps of Engineers has established a protocol of releasing water on scheduled days. Those scheduled releases on about a dozen weekends each year help support a booming whitewater industry that draws about 6,000 visitors who pump more than $2 million into the local economy each whitewater weekend.
While summertime flows have also been increased in an effort to make for better trout habitat, Druckenmiller and partner guide Jake Martzin, who are key players in a group called the Lehigh Coldwater Fisheries Alliance, think further tweaking the system's management could make the river an even bigger trout fishing draw.
The Lehigh already supports some wild trout and certain pockets remain cold enough to support stocked trout through the summer. Releasing additional cold water from the reservoir for two months in the summer could, coldwater advocates believe, dramatically improve the river as a trout stream and make it one of the premier trout fisheries in the east.
A 40-mile stretch of year-round trout water, the Lehigh Coldwater Fisheries Alliance estimates, could be worth $30 million a year.
There are challenges, of course. For one, increasing summertime flows would require officials to store more water behind the dam than they prefer. Also, the dam also lacks a sophisticated water release mixing system (such as the one on Gathright Dam on the Jackson) to pull water from different levels of the reservoir to provide water that's the optimum temperature.
Those challenges aren't insurmountable. Still, it's hard to predict how far the coldwater advocates will get on their quest.
Why should Virginian's give a hoot?
For one thing, the Lehigh is only about six hours away and could prove to be a tempting destination.
For another, the progress activists have made in helping shape recreation management on the river should serve as motivation to Virginians who would like to see the Smith and Jackson rivers develop into the kind of blue ribbon destinations for which they also seem suited.
