English

Abstract

Little information exists regarding the effects of mountain top removal/valley fill coal mining on stream fish populations in West Virginia and Kentucky. To address this knowledge gap, we conducted a study in cooperation with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) Region III to characterize the fish communities that exist in these regions and to evaluate the effects of these mining operations on fish populations. During 1999-2000, fish assemblages were sampled in 58 sites in West Virginia and in 15 sites in Kentucky. Results from this sampling effort indicated that not enough reference (unmined) sites were included to adequately assess the potential effects of mountain top mining/valley fill operations on fish communities in the area. We found a strong relationship between stream size (as described by stream order) and the total number of fish species present that confounded the effects of mining. As a result, in Fall 2001, we sampled 13 sites in the Guyandotte River drainage, including eight sites in the Mud River that were classified as filled or filled/residential and five reference (unmined) sites in the Big Ugly. Both the number of species and the number of benthic species present were greater in the reference sites than in the filled sites in 2001. Water chemistry analysis revealed that five of the Mud River sites sampled in 2001 had detectable levels of selenium (9.5 - 31.5 µg/l). Sites that were associated with valley fills that had detectable levels of selenium seemed to be more impaired than sites associated with valley fills that had no detectable levels of selenium. Clearly, careful site selection and a multiple year collecting regimen are needed to determine the effects of these mining operations on stream fish assemblages.