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EPA may ease rules for water transfer
Fishermen scored a victory this year when they successfully argued sediment and heated water flowing out of the Schoharie Reservoir was ruining trout habitat in a world renowned fly fishing stream, the Esopus Creek. The New York City De-partment of Environmental Protection was ordered to pay as much as $5.75 million in civil penalties, and it had to get a Clean Water Act permit for its Shandaken Tunnel piping system, which transfers water from one part of the Catskill mountains to another. The permit requires the city to develop strategies for protecting trout habitat in that portion of its vast upstate drinking water collection system. The Environmental Protection Agency is on the verge of undercutting the basis for the argument used successfully in the case by Trout Unlimited, Riverkeeper and the New York Attorney General.
Native brook trout are in hot water
My first brook trout arrived on a frosty late-spring morning in mountain water so cold it made my fingers tingle before going completely numb. No bigger than my hand, the brookie was a work of art to rival New Hampshire's Chocorua Lake, its home just before I enticed it to swallow my fly and to which I would return it moments later. Its olive skin peppered with blue-ringed red dots and a rakish orange belly is a vivid image that has stayed with me for more than 25 years. If I had a lick of artistic ability, I could draw that fish from memory. Since arriving here 18 years ago, my encounters with brookies have been fewer and farther between. Some of that has to do with the other fish that occupy my time: white perch, croaker and, of course, striped bass. (Let's not even mention menhaden, OK?) But even when I've carved out the time, it's been hard to do a meet-and-greet with Maryland's only native trout.
Spill probe as beauty spot lake reopens
THE CHASE beauty spot where thousands of rare fish died after a sewage leak has been reopened as investigators continue inquiries into the cause and long-term effects of the spill. The spill - in the form of a grey fungus -covered large areas of water in the 250-acre National Trust-owned beauty spot at Woolton Hill, near Newbury last month. A walker reported the spill after seeing dead fish including brown trout and endangered bullhead and lamprey floating on the surface. The Environment Agency estimated more than 2,000 fish had died along with other marine life in the chalk stream and an adjoining lake. An agency spokesman said this week: "The National Trust has reopened the area but is warning people not to swim or let their pets go in the water. .
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