Investigating Pollution and Fish Kills

Healthy fish, forests, wildlife, and people are dependent on clean water. Missouri has a history of investigating fish kills and pollution-related events in our water resources that pre-dates MDC’s formation in 1937.

In fact, Missouri’s first water pollution law, Contamination of Streams–Misdemeanor, was on the books before 1909. The law stated, “It shall be unlawful for any person to cause any deleterious substance to be placed, run, or drained into any of the waters of this state in quantities sufficient to injure, stupefy, or kill fish, which may inhabit the same at or below the point where any substance was thrown, run, or drained into such waters; provided that it shall not be a violation of this section for any person engaged in industry, to cause or permit any water subject to his control or used in any branch of such industry to be so discharged under such precautionary measures as have been specifically approved by the commission. Any person violating any of the provisions of this section shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor.”

This statute became part of the Wildlife Code of Missouri in 1939 after MDC was created. This and other early legislative attempts to protect water resources were driven by disease epidemics spread through water or impacts to livelihoods when water polluted by one person prevented economic success by another. Wherever you lived in Missouri, there was a good chance you would be affected by your upstream neighbor, or you may unknowingly be impacting your neighbors downstream. However, cases tried under the early statutes usually weren’t won in court because the regulation just didn’t have any teeth.

Water Health: A Top Priority

Clean water was a top priority for MDC. Water pollution reduced the amount of fish that could be produced in Missouri’s waters, and fish from some locations weren’t safe for people to eat. The Conservation Commission hired Paul G. Barnikol in 1939 to study the effects of water pollution on Missouri’s fisheries. Barnikol was the first fisheries graduate from University of Missouri and the third fisheries biologist hired by the commission.

Regional surveys to document the effects of pollution on fisheries in Missouri started in 1945, and then conservation agents began a yearly statewide survey of pollution in 1949. In the early days of the Water Pollution Program, many of the same issues we face today — like sewage effluents, packing plant wastes, hydropower generation, and industrial plant discharges — were causing fish kills. However, pollutants were more widespread then, and there were far fewer staff available to focus on cleaning up pollution. Past pollution had resulted in conditions that poisoned Missouri’s aquatic life and made fishing and recreating on Missouri waters unappealing at best, and impossible at worst, in some areas of the state. Coal mining drainage was a big problem at that time. Historic files also show that the new chemical age in agriculture was affecting fisheries in the late 1940s and early 1950s through unintended consequences of herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers running off fields into streams.

Education and Outreach

MDC outreach at the time educated the public on the gravity of the pollution issue and promoted the need for better state and federal regulations. An excerpt from an April 1950 Missouri Conservationist article by Herbert J. Fisher noted, “One of the gravest problems confronting [us] is stream pollution … It is not a crisis lying in the future to be faced at a later date; it is not a menace which faces some distant group of people. It is right here, in Missouri, a threat to health, beauty and all aquatic life.”

The article was written two years after the enactment of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act in 1948. This federal law helped with construction of municipal waste treatment plants but left much to be desired for protecting water quality and aquatic biota. Staff in the Water Pollution Program worked closely with the Conservation Federation of Missouri and helped pass the Water Pollution Control Act in the Missouri Legislature in 1957. This was a big deal for clean water. It created a Water Pollution Control Board and established a permitting system for new and modified pollution discharges. After the law was implemented, water quality improvements were observed in the statewide pollution surveys conducted by conservation agents.

More Laws, Cleaner Water

State and federal legislatures continued to evaluate and improve the Water Pollution Control Act during the 1960s, and MDC created a Water Quality Branch to better respond to the improvements in the act. Staff in the branch worked closely with the Clean Water Commission to inventory pollution in Missouri and its effects on aquatic biota.

Under the improved Federal Water Pollution Control Act, water quality standards were needed for streams crossing state borders. The newly formed Water Quality Branch worked to propose water quality standards for the state that were protective of aquatic life, some of which are still in state code today.

In the early 1970s, the Federal Water Pollution Control Act was again reorganized and expanded with significant changes. The expanded act became known as the Federal Clean Water Act in 1972. The Environmental Protection Agency was created to implement the improvements and the new law had aggressive goals: “zero discharge of pollutants into navigable waters by 1985 and fishable and swimmable waters by 1983.”

To comply with the new federal regulations, the Clean Water Commission began to establish water quality standards for different classes of water bodies based upon designated uses defined in the Clean Water Act. Language was included in Missouri code that made it illegal to discharge harmful contaminants into waters of the state, degrade water quality below established standards, or exceed effluent limitations established in a permit. The new Clean Water law was far superior to the pre-1909 law in the Wildlife Code. There was still no Missouri Department of Natural Resources (DNR) in 1972, so MDC, the Clean Water Commission, the Attorney General’s office, and prosecuting attorneys coordinated the enforcement of the new water pollution laws. The Clean Water Commission wanted to adopt MDC’s methods of collecting evidence about fish kills to enforce the new law.

Fish Kills and Pollution

Fish kills are categorized into four different types based on their pollution-related causes: municipal, agricultural, industrial, or transportation pollution. Reliable computerized records on fish kill investigations started in about 1988. These records demonstrate a spike in the number of fish kills in the 1990s, decline through the early 2000s, and remaining near 30 events per year for the past 20 years.

In the early 1990s, industrial pollution sources were often the leading cause of fish kills, but in recent years municipal pollution has been the leading cause of events, followed by agricultural pollutants. Sewage and chlorinated water releases are the most frequent sources of municipal pollution that kills fish.

When fish kills and pollution were part of the Wildlife Code, MDC worked closely with the American Fisheries Society’s Pollution Committee to develop scientifically sound and defensible methods to collect chemical and biological evidence linking pollutants to fish kills, quantify the dead organisms, and calculate monetary values for the event. The American Fisheries Society is a nongovernmental, professional organization established in 1870 and dedicated to strengthening the fisheries profession, advancing fisheries science, and conserving fisheries resources.

At first, values of fish were obtained from the commercial fishing industry, but this limited cases to harvested species. Also, it only accounted for market value, not the costs of producing the fish, known as replacement value. Hatchery production costs were added to include more species, but many fish species are neither harvested nor produced in hatcheries.

Newer methods provide values for all fish species in Missouri, with prices ranging from $0.20 per minnow to $3,000 per paddlefish. MDC also assesses values for other animals killed during pollution events, such as amphibians, birds, mussels, crayfish, other macroinvertebrates, and mammals.

The American Fisheries Society expanded damage calculation methods to include a recovery time element for biological injuries called interim loss. Interim loss accounts for biological losses for the duration of the recovery period following a pollution-related incident. For example, if left to recover unassisted, a trophy-size largemouth bass killed during an incident would not be replaced by a new trophy-size bass for several years. There are biological losses to the system until largemouth bass of trophy-size return to the affected water body. MDC began calculating interim loss for events that killed multiple memorable or trophy-size fish and for events that damaged systems so badly that they would not recover for several years.

The American Fisheries Society also established methods for calculating recreational losses from pollution-related events. A primary loss from a fish kill is reduced angling until the system recovers, but birdwatching, swimming, and other forms of enjoying nature can also suffer after pollution. Including recreational losses in settlements compensates society for losing these opportunities.

Working Together

DNR was created in 1974 to enforce the Clean Water Act and work to clean up pollution in Missouri. Fish kill and pollution investigations are now a partnership process between both departments. DNR leads investigations, clean ups, remediation of damage caused by pollution, and assesses penalties. MDC supports DNR by leading investigations of fish kills, counting and identifying affected wildlife, and calculating biological value of the damaged resources.

Both agencies have complimentary programs for monitoring plant and animal populations and the environment, providing places for Missourians to enjoy nature, and helping Missourians protect and manage our fish, forest, and wildlife resources.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, MDC, Conservation Federation of Missouri, and DNR enlisted the help of Missourians by creating the Missouri Stream Team Program. The program educates Missourians about streams and their problems and shows its members how to identify and solve those problems through monitoring, stewardship, and advocacy. A more recent joint effort is an online harmful algal bloom reporting application that allows the public to report suspected algae blooms. Staff from both departments are notified and can investigate.

Missourians value nature and are concerned about water quality and aquatic life. You can help by ensuring that your activities don’t release pollutants into Missouri waters. If you notice dead or dying fish, please report them on the MDC fish kill reporting app. Become a Missouri Stream Team Program member and learn how to spot problems and improve conditions in a stream near you. By working together, we can protect our aquatic resources. 

Fish Kill and Algal Bloom Reporting Apps

For more information on fish kills, visit short.mdc.mo.gov/Zr6. If you think you have discovered a fish kill, report it. Use the app, located online at short.mdc.mo.gov/4PV.

For information on algal blooms, including how to report, visit short.mdc.mo.gov/4uS.

Missouri Stream Team

Join a Missouri Stream Team and become part of a community of volunteers who focus on the health of Missouri streams. Volunteers on stream teams learn about Missouri’s 110,000 miles of flowing water and do hands-on projects such as water quality monitoring, among other things. The program is a partnership between MDC, the Conservation Federation of Missouri, and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. For more information, visit mostreamteam.org.