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Post by yihunt on Apr 7, 2009 17:47:27 GMT -4
Tuesday, April 07, 2009 By Deborah Weisberg, Special to the Post-Gazette Scrap those opening day plans to fish at Turtle Creek. The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission has suspended trout stockings at the Allegheny County stream scheduled for April 14 and the week of April 27 because of pollution from a gasoline pipe that ruptured in Murrysville last fall.
The leak was at Sunoco Logistics, near Hoss's Steak and Sea House on Route 22, and cleanup crews worked at three areas along Turtle Creek as far east as Pleasant Valley Road. The pipe was repaired, but so much gasoline infiltrated the soil and, consequently, the stream, there is no point in stocking fish, said PFBC biologist Rick Lorson.
"Our primary concern is tainting of the fish flesh," he said. "It doesn't take much petroleum product to do that. Soils will have to be removed around the site before we can stock again. The longer it goes without removal, the longer the gasoline will trickle into the soil and into the stream."
Turtle Creek has had mine drainage and sewage over the years, but the Turtle Creek Watershed Association and other partners had restored it to a viable put-and-take fishery. The stocked section -- almost four miles from Saunders Station Road bridge to the mouth of Brush Creek -- usually draws big opening day crowds. Trout season opens April 18.
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