River’s health is declining

By DAN KEGLEY/Staff

A public meeting about a study of water quality in the Middle Fork of the Holston River is set for this week.
Officials with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality will host the open meeting Aug. 7 at 6 p.m. at the Glade Springs Community Center, 318 Vine St.
“DEQ is working to identify sources of bacteria and pollution in Wolf Creek and the Middle Fork Holston River watershed. This pollution decreases the quality of the water, prohibiting swimming and fishing, and damaging the habitat of organisms living at the bottom of the stream,” a release this week said.
“During the study, DEQ will develop a total maximum daily load, or a TMDL, for the waters. A TMDL is the total amount of a pollutant a water body can contain and still meet water quality standards. To restore water quality, pollutant levels have to be reduced to the TMDL amount.”
That’s where public participation plays a role. According to Teresa Frazier, a water quality monitor in DEQ’s Southwest Virginia office in Abingdon, everyone in a watershed, the area from which water eventually enters a particular body of water, contributes to the condition of that body, in this case the Holston’s Middle Fork.
The Middle Fork, Frazier said, is “in decline.” At the confluence in Washington County of the Middle and South Forks, “the Middle Fork’s murky water can be seen flowing into South Fork’s clear water.”
The Middle’s decline, she said, “is predominantly due to agriculture, all the cows that have access not necessarily to the river but to tributaries.”
Tributaries are keys to understanding water quality. While cattle and development sedimentation may be kept out of the river and even large streams flowing into it, the effect of cattle and development on even the smallest, often unnamed, streams can be detected downstream.
The study at hand focuses on “bacteria contamination in the waters of the Middle Fork Holston River” in Washington County, a DEQ report said. The impaired stream segments are estimated to be approximately 44.4 miles of the Middle Fork. The impairments relate to the presence of fecal coliform bacteria “from the Dutton [Branch] confluence downstream to the Neff community.”
An impairment related to aquatic insects that are a crucial part of the stream’s food chain “extends from the Rt. 91 bridge downstream to the Neff community,” the report said.
For more information, contact Shelly D. Williams, study coordinator in the DEQ Southwest Regional Office in Abingdon, by phone at (276) 676-4845, or at 800-592-5482, and by e-mail at . Additional information is also available on the DEQ Web site at http://www.deq.virginia.gov/tmdl.