With its great scenery, unique climate, and recreation opportunities, West Virginia’s Canaan Valley in Tucker County has become a hot destination for tourists. Several ski areas and a state park are there, and with increased traffic in the area, developers are eager to capitalize on the Valley’s popularity by re-designating the Upper Blackwater River a warm water stream from a cold water trout stream.

This re-designation would lower pollution limits and permit more sewage discharge in the river. The availability of more sewage to be pumped into Upper Blackwater will increase the likelihood of more development.

But ecologically, the Upper Blackwater and the area it drains are inordinately sensitive, and laws are in place to control development.

"The greatest problem up there is a lack of proper land management," explained Bryan Moore, a West Virginia Rivers Coalition board member and a longtime activist with Trout Unlimited. "If they can get Upper Blackwater re-designated as warm water, it would really open things up to the haphazard, unplanned development we have seen in the past."

This 23-mile section of river, upstream from Davis and the Blackwater Canyon, runs through Canaan Valley State Park and Timberline Resort.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wrote a clean-up plan, or Total Maximum Daily Load, protecting dissolved oxygen levels on Upper Blackwater in 1998. A high dissolved oxygen content means that sensitive "indicator species" such as trout can live and reproduce in the waterway.

A dissolved oxygen count of six milligrams (mg) per liter is the minimum level needed to sustain a cold water fishery.

"What they want to do is lower the dissolved oxygen to five mg/liter to make Upper Blackwater a warm water designation. A stream with that level would be very hard on trout. Five is really low," Moore explained.

Representatives from the Upper Blackwater River Watershed Association -- which, according to records at the Secretary of State’s office, is comprised partly of developers -- have been lobbying the West Virginia Environmental Quality Board to drop the cold water designation. They say that the sparse data collected by Potesta & Associates, a Charleston consulting firm, shows that there is no trout reproduction in the main stem of Upper Blackwater.

But Moore pointed out that trout sometimes go into the upper tributaries to spawn, and come back to the main stem of the river for feeding and habitat purposes, depending heavily on the main stem.

"The biggest problem with Potesta’s study is that they did it at a terrible time," he continued. "It was done at the hottest part of the year, and during drought conditions." U.S. Geological Survey measurements show that when the firm conducted temperature readings, the river was flowing at only 20 percent of its historic average flow.

Historically, the Upper Blackwater has had problems with dissolved oxygen levels being low. Even without the threat of development, "the EPA wondered if they’d be able to resolve the dissolved oxygen problem at all," Moore said, explaining that when there is an increase in water temperature, there is a decrease in dissolved oxygen.

Many factors can cause temperature increases. For example, the Upper Blackwater is improperly shaded because riparian areas have been disturbed by construction of a golf course and other impacts to the riparian area. Also, beaver ponds slow the flow of the river, increasing its temperature. Effluent from sewage dischargers would greatly compound the problem, since dissolved oxygen would be consumed to break down this additional runoff. Of course, trout populations then would be especially hard-hit.

There is currently no centralized sewage treatment plant for the area. The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection has said that building such a plant would solve problems related to sewage discharge, but so far, developers are unwilling to invest the $10 million to build the facility. Instead, they are trying to simply change the river’s legal designation as a trout stream.

Additionally, if pollution limits on Upper Blackwater are lifted, it could spell trouble for West Virginia’s other sensitive, cold water rivers and streams. "That’s the biggest danger of all here," Moore cautioned. "They could attempt to drop a lot of cold water stream designations in very short order.

"The question is, do we want healthy cold water trout streams, or warm water drainage ditches?"

Nathan Fetty is a Program Associate with West Virginia Rivers Coalition.