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Ruralite Cafe: Published 4/13/00By Lynn HotalingErosion's effects hit too close to home |
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Another week, another Cafe, and erosion is still in the news. At least this time the coverage centers around county planners' efforts to minimize the effects of land-disturbing activities on our mountain watersheds.
Two weeks ago, while using this space to advocate for stricter controls on developers, I was able to maintain a certain detachment. But now I'm writing from a more personal perspective - my son's dead 22-inch trout. Scott, 13, has loved fish since his toddler days. From the smallest goldfish bowl to the largest aquarium - anywhere he could watch them swim around - he's been fascinated by the finned. At the beach last week he spent most of his money on a casting net so he could catch mullet out of the inlet. He didn't kill them - that's not the point. He caught them, saved the biggest ones in a bucket for awhile, watched them, and then he threw them back. Scott dreamed of a pond of his own for years. He spent hours out in the creek by our house, moving and piling rocks in his tireless efforts to deepen the water. Once his dad got a tractor, however, Scott realized his time had come. He badgered Richard incessantly until pond construction began. It's not a big pond - only a semi-circular area maybe 3 feet deep and some 10 feet in diameter. The water swirls around a big rock they left where they found it. His trout would like that big rock, Scott told me at the time. After burying a 4-inch pipe to bring water from the creek and installing a drain to return the water to the creek, they diverted water into the pipe and the pond began to fill. It was October 1997, and Scott was beside himself with excitement. His happiness was complete as soon as we brought home 13 little rainbows from a trout farm in Swain County. We warned him against premature optimism - after all, neither Richard nor I knew anything about raising fish. We bought a bag of trout chow and crossed our fingers. Then we watched them grow. We lost fish here and there along the way - some went out the drain into the creek and a few were lost to predators when they were small - but all in all, the trout thrived on the minimal care we provided. We caught one and ate it, but Scott decided he'd really rather watch them swim. After two and a half years, we considered our experiment a success. Until we returned from our vacation to find a pond clogged with silt - and dying trout. Dirt that apparently washed down the creek during hard rains April 2 and 3 completely blocked the pond's intake, cutting off the flow of oxygenated water to the trout. The dirt came from upstream construction - land-disturbing activity of too small a scope to be monitored under existing laws. Sedimentation isn't any more wrong just because it happened to us. But it's certainly more personal. Our trout were no more or less valuable than any others lost in silt-laden waters, but they underscore the need to protect our streams. County commissioners have a proposed sediment ordinance on the table. While it is no more restrictive than state regulations already in place, it would put enforcement into the hands of local officials. That should mean more on-site inspections. The draft ordinance contains a notification requirement to ensure that home construction on sites less than an acre is at least monitored. It was reported here two weeks ago that sedimentation is the number one water pollutant in Western North Carolina. My young fish-lover doesn't have to rely on the printed word to know the truth of that statement. All he has to do is look outside. |
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