Report from the Saint (60-8)

This will be my last report until it rains. The saint is running about 30 cfs right now. The 72 pool is almost completely choked with algae. I could not paddle well through it. Every third or fourth stroke was heavy with slime.
I've never seen this happen before, and don't know to what extent it has affected the whole river. I suspect fisherman's and millstream is the same.
I suspect this is the result of increased pollution. It makes me extremely sad to see what we do to our environment. The river is beginning to take on a bad odor.
I also suspect, and perhaps some environmental knowledge out there could elucidate, that in the near future, there will be a massive fish kill as the oxygen disasppears. There is no rain in the 10 day forecast.
At any rate it depresses me too much to see this happening....so I will be avoiding the Saint.

You should name it Report from the Ain't
It sounds really bad.

Don't worry Chuck. The Saint will always be back. A couple of good rains will flush all the crap mankind put in her out and down to Lake Wapapello, and a new fresh clean Saint will return!

It has been this way for millions of years, and despite Max Planck's warning I have confidence it will continue to exist in a similar manner in the future!

Freshwater algal blooms are the result of an excess of nutrients, particularly phosphorus.[1] The excess of nutrients may originate from fertilizers that are applied to land for agricultural or recreational purposes. They may also originate from household cleaning products containing phosphorus.[2] These nutrients can then enter watersheds through water runoff.[3] Excess carbon and nitrogen have also been suspected as causes.

When phosphates are introduced into water systems, higher concentrations cause increased growth of algae and plants. Algae tend to grow very quickly under high nutrient availability, but each alga is short-lived, and the result is a high concentration of dead organic matter which starts to decay. The decay process consumes dissolved oxygen in the water, resulting in hypoxic conditions. Without sufficient dissolved oxygen in the water, animals and plants may die off in large numbers.

Thanks for the info Gootch. It's what I suspected. I am starting to smell the foul odor of decay.
Kuthe- if it rains tomorrow, and the river comes up, I too think it will wash it away. However with no rain in the forecast, it seems like we will have a nail-biter as to whether the Saint gets sterilized or not.

And since I have been seeing them spraying/fertilizing the fields around farmton that are right on the banks of the saint, I would say the algae is getting its fill of nutrients.

I really wish there were a regulation in place to have buffer zones along river banks. Like so many hundreds of yards where the river bank must be left "wild". I grew up along the banks of the Ohio and the farmers would plow right up the very edge and put in tiling to quickly drain off excess water. The results of course are increased flooding, limited natural silt/pollution filtering and massive erosion due to the increased water discharge of no riparian zones. Not to mention barren dirt cut banks are just plain ugly.

I think one of the reasons I fell in love with whitewater is because I spent decades only seeing rivers the country had made into ugly ditches. I swear I never saw a clear stream until I was at least 20, I'm being very honest here. I always thought of rivers as stagnant pools of milk chocolate colored water.

Last week I paddled the Chattooga and after one tributary came in on Lake Tugaloo, there were lots of algal blooms. Couldn't help but think of the situation you guys are having.

I feel like the saint didn't get some of the massive water it has gotten in years past, but maybe I am wrong, I feel like last year there was a good two week period when the saint was above bridge level, I do not remember that happening this year?

in other news I paddled LRC recently and the water quality was top notch, didnt realize that it is the deepest gorge east of the grand canyon?!

Steven I think you're right. I didn't boat it, but there as a good week long bout of rain sometime after easter last year (?) when the saint never dropped below bridge level. This year, on the Friday before the races, it peaked at some 4 1/2 feet over the bridge in the evening. Besides once at the end of January, and Easter thursday, it scarcely approached the low D bridge (that is from my computer in STL, it never did). Sounds like river is in as bad a fix for water as we are.

LRC as in our lower rock creek (?)
as in where did you find the water and what does your boat look like now?

Rory

It's a plateau run in NE Alabama

I've heard the Noli is the deepest and that the Russell Fork is the deepest. Anyone know the truth?

Quick Google search:

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/260447/Hells-Canyon

there's gotta be a hundred gorges deeper than LRC east of the grand canyon.

new river gorge is something like 1300 feet deep, or royal gorge over 1200 feet deep i recall and on and on. what's that one just north of Taos, the upper box. heck there are gorges all over colo deeper than LRC,

so hells canyon is east of the grand canyon?

Is what I think he meant. At least that's the criteria I had in mind.

Well, with that criteria and Google:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaks_Interstate_Park