we are the group of hunters and fishermen that do not want to see thing go down hill any more then it already has. people who actively fight the state when they lie to us over and over about things are being dumped into our rivers .
the state DID NOT support sewage treatment plant discharge upgrades and infact lied to everyone for 4-5 years about the fish kill problems we have on the shenandoah and james rivers.we fought and got the turkey and chicken litter dumping rules changed to better control the runoff into our rivers. we also fought them in meetings where they would just plain lie to groups of people that were concerned about fish kills along the shenandoah river. they actually showed pictures of pets being walked and them crapping on pavement at a newly opened mall in waynesboro and blamed this on the fish kills.
at the same meetings they posted a map of the river system that clearly showed the bacteria levels along every section of river. there own maps showed 8% average bacteria levels above most sewage treatment discharge pipes and a increase to a average of 35% below the plants.ofcourse they said this wasn't a problem.they lied and lied til we got tired of listening to the lies. at the same time they were issuing permits to dump way to many biosolids (human dry waste from sewage treatment plants that is used for fertilizer on farms)along the banks of the rivers. i finally contacted the ward burton foundation about the sewage treatment plants discharges now putting clean enough water back in our rivers. ward was then on the governors board and the game commission board. he agreed that we needed to fix this problem and began to push to fix the problem. after 2 years of pushing them we started to see sewage treatment plants upgraded on the shenandoah and now the fishing is getting better.don't tell me that i don't know what i'm talking about when it comes to fish kills on the shenandoah river because i spent 5 years doing nothing but fighting to have this fixed. all along staying in almost daily contact with our regional bioligist at the verona office. we were finding sores on bass everytime we fished and reporting conditions along the river daily. at the time i had a custom built jet boat and was fishing most of the troubled areas weekly.we also set up stations along the river to do weekly water samples to see if anything was changing.the river is finally getting better after a long fight with the state.
