Here is the kerosene in Hardin creek and the industrial strength paper towels being used to clean it up. The red stuff is the kerosene, it is dyed red so that it can be identified in situations like this.

On July 21, 2010 an oil spill occurred at Mountain Oil Company in Boone, NC. The spill happened at the Mountain Oil facility on King Street.

The day before the spill, one of the workers at Mountain Oil left a maintenance door open on one of the storage tanks. Early the next day a different person began filling that tank with kerosene. The kerosene spilled straight onto the ground, it soaked into the soil and eventually reached the water table, and then it began seeping out into Hardin Creek.

Kerosene in Hardin Creek

Hardin Creek flows behind the Toyota Dealership, underneath the Regal Cinema, and then goes under King Street and flows next to the new high school, before reaching the South Fork of the New River.

Cleanup efforts continue at the Mountain Oil facility, and on Hardin Creek. Mountain Oil is paying for cleanup costs.

Clean up efforts continue in Hardin Creek

Much of the aquatic life in Hardin Creek has been killed by this event. However, there are still some fish and other things living. Since the kerosene floats on top of the water, rather than mixing with it, the ecological effects of this spill have not been as bad as the one on Hodges Creek earlier in the week. On the other hand, this spill is longer lasting, since the oil soaked into the ground it has been leaching out slowly into the creek.

Here is a short video that Kara made explaining the spill and the clean up.

Check back here for more updates and check out this short story from the Watauga Democrat.

Dead fish found in Hodges Creek, Boone NC

Over the weekend of July 17, polluted runoff from the BB&T parking lot on Highway 105 in Boone, NC killed all life in a 1.5 mile long stretch of Hodge’s Creek. Watuaga Riverkeeper, Donna Lisenby investigated the incident on Saturday evening. NC Department of Water Quality officials did not arrive to investigate the site until Monday morning, two days and two more rain storms later.

Here is the video Donna made, documenting her investigation, and surveying the damage.

The cause of the fish kill was determined to be a coal-tar based asphalt sealant applied by Sunshine Striping Asphalt and Seal Coat of Pine Hall NC. We could find no record of this company being licensed or bonded in North Carolina, or being licensed as a general contractor.  Eye witnesses report seeing the sealant being applied in the rain. This asphalt sealant is water soluble, so in the rain it just washed off the parking lot and straight into the creek, killing everything in it.

The material data safety sheet (MSDS) for Asphalt Based Pavement Sealer reads:

SECTION VII—SPILL OR LEAK PROCEDURES SARA TITLE III: #302: No #304 CERCLA: No #313: No Steps to be Taken in Case Material is Released or Spilled: Ventilate the area. Wear approved respiratory protection. Wear suitable protective clothing, gloves, and eye/face protection. Coal Tar Driveway Sealer is a marine pollutant and should be placarded as such when transported in bulk over sea or large bodies of water. Coal Tar Driveway Sealer will harm waterlife and should be prevented from entering any body of water. Dispose of in accordance with federal, state and local regulations.

Coal tar, which would be listed as a ‘hazardous waste,’ were it not for a special federal exemption, contains benzo[a]pyrene.  Benzo[a]pyrene is dangerous chemical that made EPA’s list of 12 priority “persistent bioaccumulative toxins.” Still, coal tar is being applied to asphalt across the country, and concerns are growing that toxins from the product are being tracked into homes, schools, hospitals and other buildings.

Check out the following presentation from Austin that more fully explains how coal tar sealants harm our environment.

The city of Austin, TX banned the product almost 5 years ago, when it was recognized to be damaging the local ecosystem. More recently a few other cities, including Washington, D.C., have followed suit.  Overwhelmingly, though, the product remains unregulated, exacting unmeasured costs on cities and ecosystems (like Boone and Hodge’s creek) across the country. Not only is this stuff toxic, but there are cheap, far less toxic petroleum based alternatives, so there is no real reason to use this stuff at all.

Now that the toxic effects of coal-tar based sealants has been made abundantly clear to the people of Boone, we are working to promote a ban of coal-tar based asphalt sealants in the town of Boone, with the hope that other surrounding towns and counties will follow suit.

Click here to check out a story in the Watauga Democrat’s about Hodge’s Creek accident.

Click here to see photos of the Riverkeeper Team doing an aquatic life assessment on Hodge’s Creek with the Division of Water Quality.

On Saturday July 24, The Watuaga Riverkeeper and Appalachian Voices showed the high country a great time at the first ever Watauga Riverkeeper Festival. Held at the Valle Crucis Community Park, the event brought out kids and adults to have fun and celebrate the Watauga River. The purpose of the festival was to promote environmental stewardship through outdoor recreation. Getting out and enjoying natural treasures like the Watauga River helps us appreciate them and see the need for their protection.

Some of the festivities included fly fishing clinics, a watermelon eating contest,  nature walks, field games for the kids, a bouncy hut, local vendors and food. Great music was provided by The Alberta Boys and Melissa Reeves.

A special thanks goes out to all our sponsors:

Pearls and body paint at the WRK festival. Check out the mountains and the river. Now thats our kind of art!

Tsuga Canopies

River And Earth Adventures

Earth Fair

Mast General Store

Foscoe Fishing

Footsloggers

The Town of Banner Elk

Dot Griffith and Jamie Goodman took these pictures that do the event more justice than my description.

More Pictures from Jamie Goodman can be found here.

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Kids in the Watauga river at the festival. Yes, thankfully the Watauga is still a wild mountain river where kids can play till their hearts content, er well at least until their parents haul them out. No concrete, no docks, no boats. Just kids, rocks and the river, the way it ought to be.

Boys playing in the Watauga River. Ok, so raise your hand if you have fond memories from your childhood of swimming in a clean cold mountain river with your friends?

People enjoying the shade and the food under the pavilion

Hula hooping to the live music

“Water is a right, not a commodity.” What is the real price of ‘liquid gold?’ “There is enough water for human need but not for human greed,” Gandhi.

Powerful statements have inundated the popular perception of water-rights activism. In a time where water wars divide nations and the struggle to survive can be defined by a 5-gallon bucket, the political and social repercussions of water ownership can destroy or unify communities.

But in Boone, NC we aren’t faced with rapidly falling water tables or toxic sludge lurking within the sources of our drinking water. Paddle (or tube or wade) down the Watauga River and you can still witness nature’s pristine beauty. Worn rock faces testify to the ancient history of the Appalachian Mountains. Cows and horses munch on thriving grasses, a testament to the region’s agricultural reliance on the Watauga. The deceiving simplicity of the Watauga River rests in its murmuring rapids and meandering path. The complexity of maintaining this reliability rests in nature’s filters (plants), flood plains, and cyclical processes. Within a 2 hour kayak trip my eyes adjusted from the computer screen to lush trees and clear skies; my body relaxed from the stiff office chair to the smooth rock and toss of my boat. I am continually amazed at the rejuvenating power of enjoying nature. Playing in a river is like returning home—my fondest childhood memories were skipping rocks, splashing friends and scavenging for crawdads.

As we ‘grow up’ we are faced with the reality that water is not always clean nor always abundant. News headlines flash stories of water abuses and environmental injustices from Appalachia to the Amazon, Nile and Mekong. Cherishing and protecting our local watershed ensures that our community won’t be another catastrophic headline. Water rights activism is not restrained to smart slogans or dramatic campaigns. Teaching a child how to fish, reporting sediment erosion to local officials, or conserving water use at home are all ways to guard the community’s water security. To the Watauga River we are all advocates, protectors, messengers—in a sense, Waterkeepers.

Check out the video documenting law enforcement officials, pharmacists, volunteers and citizen participants:

Operation Medicine Cabinet May 22, 2010

Thank you to all of the community partners involved, especially the Watauga and Avery County Sheriff’s Departments and Boone Drug for handling and disposing of the turned in medicines. For more information please visit the High Country Press coverage or the OMC website.

The Racers, photo by Dot Griffith.

The First Annual Watauga River Gorge Race was a huge success. 41 racers showed up to battle head to head in this 4 mile race from the Guy Ford Road put-in to Sate Line Falls. We couldn’t have asked for better water levels and weather.

The Start, photo by Dot Griffith.

John Grace has compiled a list of the results on the LVM site but here are some of the highlights:

First place overall: Chris Gragtmans
First lady: Laura Ferrell
First short boat: Evan Garcia
First playboat: Mark Miller
First person that also stopped and helped a swimmer: Will Stubblefield

Donna, has put together a little video from the race, that mass start was pretty crazy.

Dot Griffith was kind enough to take some great photos of the race, check out her gallery on flickr for more pictures.

Everyone leaning back to make it under the bridge, photo by Dot Griffith.

Big thanks are due to AW and Mike Mayfield for getting the road down to the take out fixed, Sprinkle for manning the finish line, John Grace for helping, all the racers for coming and for all the racers and other folks that helped out with safety.

Mark your calendars, for the last weekend in March because we are going to do it again next year and it’s going to be even bigger and even better. The winning time was right around 31 minutes, so that is the time to beat.

On Sunday we held a river cleanup on the Watauga Gorge. The weather was not as cooperative as it was for the race, but we still got a good bit of trash out of the river.

Steve and Will with the truck bed liner they just pulled out of the river

We got some big stuff out of the river including a truck bed liner and a road sign, but because of a lack of manpower, we weren’t able to get it all the way to the road to get it out. We ended up stashing a big pile of trash, high up on the bank next to Hydro Rapid.  So we are waiting on a nicer day, and a few more volunteers to help us get our trash stash out of the gorge.

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In hopes of encouraging the EPA to come out with overdue regulations on the handling of coal ash, EIP and Earth Justice with help from the Appalachian Voices Watauga Riverkeeper team released a report today illustrating the damages caused by 31 coal ash disposal sites across the country.

The report details 31 sites where major damage to surface water or groundwater has been documented. The pollution present in this waste is among the earth’s most harmful to aquatic life and humans – arsenic, lead, selenium, cadmium and other heavy metals, which cause cancer and crippling neurological damage. If these poisons can be kept out of the fish we eat, the water we drink, bathe in, and need to survive, simply through regulation, than we must take that long overdue step, not only for the sake of our public waters but for humanity’s sake as well.

Asheville Ash Pond and Nearby Homes

Coal Ash Moonscape at Belews Creek Steam Station

The sites highlighted in the report are by no means the only sites where damage has occurred surrounding coal ash ponds, these are only 31 of the sites that have the most available information showing clear environmental effects. In fact as reported last year by the Appalachian Voices Riverkeeper Team- in North Carolina all of the 13 coal ash ponds have been found to be leaching heavy metals into groundwater, but only the worst five are listed in today’s national report on coal ash contamination to waterways. The report is meant to supplement an EPA list of about 70 proven and potential damage cases from coal ash disposal facilities.

Six of the 31 damage cases listed in this report are in North Carolina. They include Progress Energy’s Asheville, Cape Fear, Lee and Sutton power plants, Duke Energy’s Belews Creek plant, and the Swift Creek Landfill “beneficial use site” operated by ReUse Technology, Inc. and Full Circle Solutions Inc..

Currently there is no federal regulation regarding the disposal of coal ash and coal combustion waste. It is often stored in huge, wet unlined open ponds adjacent to rivers and streams. In North Carolina these ponds are up to 500 acres in size making them larger than the Carolina Panthers stadium. The EPA is considering classifying coal ash as a hazardous waste, which would mean many more safeguards to protect rivers, streams, wetlands and groundwater.

Based on our research that tested water, sediment and fish at the massive TVA Ash Spill in Harriman, TN, we believe that coal ash is hazardous, and this report graphically underscores that point. Regulation of coal ash is long overdue and the EPA and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) need to quit delaying the release of a hazardous ruling for coal ash.

* Preliminary independent tests find high levels of toxic chemicals in Harriman TN fly ash deposits-January 1, 2009

* Independent fish sampling results find high levels of toxic chemicals in Kingston, TN fly ash deposits and Emory River fish-May 18, 2009

* All N.C. Coal Ash Ponds Contaminating Groundwater, Analysis Shows-October 6, 2009

* Kingston Coal Plant Released 2.6 Million Pounds of Arsenic, Nine Other Pollutants into the Emory River in 2008-More than the Entire Water Pollution Output of All Other US Power Plants-December 8, 2009

* Environmental Groups Ask EPA Enforcement Program to Increase State Oversight and Step Up Enforcement Against Coal Waste Impoundments

The hard work and relentless advocacy of our organization and our partners to ensure clean water and healthy fisheries is yielding results. Recently, NC announced it was requiring Duke Energy and Progress Energy to implement additional monitoring of heavy metals at is coal ash ponds in NC. The news was covered on WFAE and the Institute for Southern Studies: “North Carolina orders utilities to test groundwater near coal ash ponds.”

In the year since the App Voices Waterkeeper Team launched its assault on water pollution from dirty coal ash, our work has been reported by 60 Minutes, National Public Radio, New York Times, The Nation, the Associated Press, Reuters, the Institute for Southern Studies, the Charlotte Observer, the News & Record and many more.

We could not do this work without the generous support of our members, they make it possible for us to continue the all out assault on Dirty Coal’s contamination of water! Look for some exciting new information from us on Ash Wednesday (February 17, 2010)! In  the meantime, here are some of our coal ash videos from last year:

In September 2009 the Watauga Riverkeeper received a report on our pollution hotline about a huge water withdrawal and diversion occurring in the headwaters reach of the Watauga River just below Grandfather Mountain. On October 20, 2009-more than thirty days after the appropriate regulatory agencies were notified we went out to investigate what corrective action had been required and this is what we found:

We need your help protecting the pristine trout waters and habitat of the Upper Watauga River.  We cordially invite you to be a part of the team that gets this problem fixed. Please send a link to this video and blog post to anyone you think may be interested in learning more about this situation. Encourage them to join us at the next Watauga River Conservation Partners meeting on Monday November 2 at 5:00 pm at the Ag Conference Center in Boone. The meeting is free and open to the public.