Who Hates Trout Rivers?

"Membrane systems are the recommended sewage treatment technology option for environmentally sensitive areas," declares Phillips. "The upper Elk and Shavers Fork headwaters are world-class trout fisheries. In the Big Spring Fork there are reproducing rainbow, brown and brook trout and pristine caves and springs. If that does not qualify as an environmentally sensitive area, I don't know what does."

Dr. Heartwell has it right when he says: "We don't have very good water laws in West Virginia; and industry can do pretty much what it wants."

But federal law — namely the Clean Water Act — is plenty good when it's enforced. The trouble is, West Virginia not only declines to enforce this statute; it habitually violates it. That's why state industries get to ruin trout streams whenever they so desire.

In order to come into compliance with the Clean Water Act, the state implemented a "tier" system for its streams. Streams with self-sustained brook trout populations received the highest ranking — Tier 3. Within their watersheds industries had to control their operations sufficiently that they didn't impair water quality. Industries could legally damage Tier 2 streams; and they could pollute the bejesus out of Tier 1 streams. It was a decent system that would have upheld federal law and ensured the survival of wild brook trout — a national treasure and one of the state's most valuable assets.

But industries (particularly coal mining, logging, farming and real-estate development) didn't like the expense and bother of having to clean up after themselves. So they prevailed on lawmakers to hatch a new ranking for wild-trout streams — Tier 2.5, by which DEP would tolerate some pollution (or with its typical lax enforcement, a whole lot).

Big Spring Fork had been a Tier 3 stream; now it was a 2.5. But industry wanted still more. In 2007 industry lobbyists shouted down a DEP proposal to designate 309 trout streams as Tier 2.5, despite the facts that the agency had unimpeachable scientific data for doing so and that federal law required it.

"The hearing was so contentious they had negotiating sessions and compromise meetings," recalls Don Garvin, legislative coordinator for the West Virginia Environmental Council, long-time TU member and former president of Mountaineer Chapter. "I'd been advised by Joe Lovett [director of the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment] to just get as many Tier 2.5 streams as I could politically. So we agreed to a 156-stream compromise. But the timber boys and the Farm Bureau wouldn't give in. And they were threatening to scuttle the whole thing."

Now Big Spring Fork is right where Snowshoe wants it — Tier 2. "It has been downgraded in order to facilitate future development," says Phillips. "The approach we seem to take here in West Virginia is let's keep a trout stream at 2.5 until someone says 'I want to log or I want to mine coal or I want to develop.' Then we lower it to 2. The reason for Tier 2.5 was to balance industry against resources. But whenever industry came in, a stream got lowered to 2. It all came to a head in June. I went to the public hearing and made some comments on Tier 2.5. There were hundreds of trout fishermen. It was the most heavily attended hearing DEP has ever had." But, as always, industry got its way.

So, at this writing, all West Virginia streams (save one on private land nominated by the enlightened owners) are downgraded to Tier 2, the default category.

Such is environmental protection in West Virginia whenever industry demands to feed at the public trough. May the state's magnificent wild trout persist until better days.