Chattahoochee River fish kill linked to Atlanta flood, drought, and sewage overflow
Officials are outlining next steps after a stormwater overflow from last Wednesday's flood killed thousands of fish in the Chattahoochee River.
Experts say the damage spans about 20 miles.
Jason Ulseth, the executive director of the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, has never seen anything like this in his more than 20 years at the organization. He says the perfect storm of drought, pollution, and sewage overflow led to the massive fish kill.
The Chattahoochee River is at near-historic lows in water levels because of the ongoing drought.
Three inches of rain fell in an hour last Wednesday, leading to a major stormwater runoff from Atlanta's sewage system into the river. That—and the high temperatures—led to low oxygen levels in the water, suffocating and killing fish across a 20-mile stretch.
"We've had a lot of time for a lot of materials to accumulate on the roadways, on the parking lots, in the dog parks," Ulseth said. "So, you know, when you get a heavy flush of rain like that, it washes in a lot of contaminants that go into the system…"
Ulseth says this is having major consequences for the environment.
"That has problems of the food chain, other animals that eat the fish, depend on the fish for for their well-being. And, you know, there's a lot of fishermen in this stretch and people are upset. I'm very upset because I'm a fisherman and going down the river and seeing these trophy fish that are just dead because of something that, you know, we've been trying to control for so long."
He also says this will create issues for the Atlanta metro's economy, local recreation, and points to concerns over climate change.
"Storms like we got on Wednesday, that supercell dropped three inches of rain in less than an hour. We're only supposed to see storms like that once every 150 years. Based off of all of our historic data here in metro Atlanta, we've had three of those in the last five years. And we are very concerned that climate change is intensifying our rainstorms and causing a lot of problems at home here on the Chattahoochee River and its lakes."
Ulseth notes that while the city of Atlanta installed infrastructure in 2008 that has prevented other potential stormwater floods since, officials will have to examine why the damage from this flood was so widespread.
"We need to now understand why this storm wasn't contained. Is it the capacity of the system? Is it the, just the overall fierceness of these storms as they are coming in and producing this rain in significantly shorter periods of time? A lot of that we don't know right now."
Chattahoochee Riverkeeper and the City of Atlanta Department of Watershed Management is investigating what happened last week. Ulseth adds that the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper has ongoing litigation over issues with overflow in the river. The organization's lawyers will also be examining this as the riverkeeper plans out its next steps.