Take a Look at My Mussels

At this very moment, your editor is comfortably numb and is, if everything is going according to plans, again having a snake run through the plumbing in his body’s most important muscle.  It thus occurs to him how strange it is that with muscles as run down and faulty as his, people at one time asked him to come speak about and display his marvelous mussels.  And some, believe it or not, actually took interest in such a thing.  If the reader finds this odd, he or she would not be alone.  But the peculiarities don’t stop there.  The reader may find further bewilderment after being informed that the editor’s mussels are now in the collection of a regional museum where they are preserved for study by qualified persons with scientific proclivities.  All of this show and tell was for just one purpose—to raise appreciation and sentiment for our mussels, so that they might be protected.

Click on the “Freshwater Mussels and Clams” tab at the top of this page to see the editor’s mussels, and many others as well.  Then maybe you too will want to flex your muscles for our mussels.  They really do need, and deserve, our help.

We’ll be back soon.

Drought Watch Issued in Parts of the Lower Susquehanna River Watershed

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has issued a “drought watch” for much of the state’s Susquehanna basin including Dauphin, Lebanon, and Perry Counties—plus those counties to their north.  Residents are asked to conserve water in the affected areas.

Irrigation of a manure-covered field.
Water conservation measures are voluntary during a drought watch, and most consumers try to cut back on nonessential use.  For many though, threats to water supply and water quality generate little concern.  This evening, on this farm along a Dauphin County waterway undergoing restoration, we shouldn’t be too surprised to see lots of water being pumped from the creek to soak down liquid manure that was spread on the fields earlier in the week.  This happens to be the only property along a five-mile segment of stream that still allows cattle and draft horses to wade, defecate, and urinate in the water.  It is the only parcel for nearly seven miles that has eroding banks of legacy sediments that are maintained denuded of nearly all vegetation.  Despite some beneficial practices like the use of cover crops, it’s a polluter.  And now its operator appears to be engaged in something new: “stream dewatering”.  With three irrigation guns in operation, this farmer was easily pumping and removing up to one half or more of the creek’s flow, which at the time, according to a United States Geological Survey gauge less than a mile upstream, was only about 3 cubic feet per second or 1,100 gallons per minute (G.P.M.).  That doesn’t let much for the municipalities downstream that rely upon this waterway as a supplemental source of drinking water, does it?  Such a large reduction in base flow can threaten the survival of fish and other aquatic inhabitants in the creek, particular during hot summer weather when dissolved oxygen levels can be at their lowest of the year.  Water is like a lot of other necessities, no one really gives it a second thought until they don’t have it; and as long as I have mine, that’s all that really matters.