Lucky13
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Posts posted by Lucky13
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I'd be interested in hearing some kind of report on the Cisco project, not too long, but I don't recall hearing anything at the last SOL or anything since.
Thx, Brian.
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Talk to the County Soil and Water Conservation District about construction, they may have a contractor who is reasonable. The easiest way to get out of a job you don't want to do is to overbid. And be sure to tak to the Regional DEC office before you do anything with fish, you need a permit.
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It took a little time to assemble this response. Further comment than this will have to come from the Town of Greece or NYSDEC as they are the entities in charge of the project site, and USACE official involvement has ended.
I spoke with my contact from the project, as I was the County representative on the project. This is the professional opinion of Josh Unghire, who is an ecologist with USACE Buffalo District, and was the USACE Technical Lead for the Planning and Implementation of the project.
"I think the shallow area the fisherman may be describing is a relic of the 2017 high water event. During the spring of 2017, sand placement in-front of the stone barrier was only partially complete, the high water event and waves of that spring mobilized a good portion of that sand over the barrier and into the bay behind. This sand was pushed over the breakwater to the back side, and south east side of the breakwater, near the point (see image below). In subsequent sampling years, I did notice shallow water in these areas during monitoring. We actually targeted some of the shallow areas on the backside of the barrier for additional plantings in 2018, because of their ideal depths for emergent vegetation. So the shoaling in this location was more likely a one time event, resulting from the highwater and incomplete barrier beach, rather than an ongoing process. I think its very unlikely the barrier beach has induced sedimentation within the bay, because after all prior to construction the bay was an open system with evidence that littoral sediments (sediments coming in from the lake near shore) were being trapped within the bay. Incoming littoral sediments now form submerged pointbars visible in aerial imagery, in front of the barrier beach, as they are conveyed down drift to the east." The image is attached below. Also attached is an aerial from spring 2021 which shows the persistence of this shallow area. Finally, the final project fact sheet published by USACE is attached.
It needs to be remembered that 2017 and 2019 were record high levels in the Lake, and fall 2023 was the lowest water since about 2015, which may be contributing to the perception that the bay is being filled from the Lake.
I hope this is helpful.
Areas of Sand accumulation_BraddockBay.pdf
Low_Water_Sandy area_April2021.pdf
Braddock Bay Closeout Fact Sheet.pdf
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The Van Lare outfall is in 90 feet of water, 3.5 miles offshore, and has 2 diffusers ~ 1/4 mile long . It is approximately on the edge of the Rochester Embayment, so the prevailing west to east flow pattern should get it away from shore. And except when the bypass tunnel (the old outfall) is used, all is getting treatment through the plant, and even when the bypass is used, the stream is screened and some treatment, like disinfectant, is employed.
A big part of the purpose of all this wastewater treatment was to get the pathogens and overload of nutrients out of the lake so that its value as drinking water would not be degraded. Return of large amounts of N2 and PO4 to the lake could result in taste and odor problems with the drinking water, with associated increased treatment costs; massive algae blooms; or increases in filamentous algae that have been such a challenge along the shoreline in the recent past. I love the fishery, but there are an awful lot of people using the water for survival and industry.
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Thank you very much. I am amazed that while it is one of the more important services we receive from our local governments where economies of scale allow construction of Publicly Owned Treatment Works, almost no time is devoted to teaching about them in schools even at the university level. I've also been very impressed with the foresight our county fathers had in utilizing State and Federal programs to keep the local dollars to 15% of total construction costs. One of my friends at USEPA calls the Monroe County system the eighth engineering wonder of the world. I certainly felt honored to work alongside the people at Pure Waters whenever we were sharing a project.
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Prior to the Combined Sewer Overflow Abatement Program, there were approximately 70 discharges from the many discharge points per year. It is unrealistic to think that all possible storm event could be captured by any sewer system, unless there are infinite resources to devote to construction, operation and maintenance.
This attachment is well worth reading if you are not familiar with the history of wastewater and stormwater treatment in Monroe County.
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When Irondequoit had the sheriff's " harvesting" the deer at night in Durand Eastman Park, my brother ran the front end loader for the Parks Department. The deer could not be used for food as they were so malnourished. He said John Hauber was the wildlife biologist assigned to the shooting, and John sawed through a leg on one of the dead deer and there was no marrow, the deer were so starved. No one really wants to shoot deer just to shoot them, do they? I hunt with the idea of eating venison, but these urban deer are often not healthy enough to provide wholesome food.
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It is more correct to call NE Quadrant CSO the Culver Goodman Tunnel.
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The system is designed to handle inflows of up to a ten year return frequency, the combination of the snow going off, and then the rain, over an inch on the 26th falling on saturated ground, has exceeded that frequency. Irondequoit Creek at Blossom Road was out of its banks, too. In general, there are two events per year where Pure Waters has to discharge to the river, or the bay (The NE quadrant Combined Sewer Overflow is on Desnmore Creek), but usually not this amount or for this long. It would be a lot worse in the summer when people are out using the river, and it is getting a huge dilution from the flows in the River, currently 8720 cfs after peaking at about 11000 cfs, at Ford St. (If I got it right in the conversion app, that's over 7 billion gallons per day). The ten year cutoff is based on costs, to capture larger events becomes prohibitively expensive.
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It's amazing what kids and aging do to a person's tastes!
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One of the Regional Fisheries Managers told me that there is nothing consistent in pigmentation of fish, and individuals of the same strain can appear very different. DEC may have been acknowledging that anglers in Lake Ontario called the rainbow trout they were catching "steelhead" so DEC followed that erroneous convention. West Coast anglers get their hackles up about this one because our chromers don't see any salt, except the runoff from the roads. Most recently, DEC has been stocking three strains. I don't know what you are talking about with your "Colombians", DEC stocks a Washington strain that originated in Chambers Creek, which is a tributary to Puget Sound, quite a distance from the Washington Oregon Border, the Columbia River. As Michigan stocked these first, DEC may have obtained eggs from Michigan. They did stock Skamanias until the disease protocols recently implemented made it impossible for them to be overwintered at the Altmar facility. Skamania's did originate from a Columbia River tributary, the Washougal River. I'm not clear on why Randolph Strain (what everyone called domestic rainbows) were discontinued. At one time, so I was told in my youth, they also raised McCloud strain rainbows descended from the originals brought by Seth Green to Caledonia. While they are rare in Spring Creek, these persist in the water source for the Caledonia hatchery, and I would venture that these were the fish that were originally planted in the Finger Lakes. But all are Rainbow trout. As to a fish in the Salmon River, aside from the stocking sources you mention, upstream of the Steelhead water are two reservoirs, both of which are inhabited by Rainbow trout, and above the Redfield Reservoir, there is a tributary to the East Branch of the Salmon River named Prince Brook, that despite being located in prime wild brook trout country, is chock full of naturalized Rainbow trout. While going over the two dams or through two sets of generators, and over Salmon River falls seems a stretch, it is possible. Also upstream of the Salmon River is the remainder of the Great Lakes, so any strain of Rainbow trout stocked by any of the contiguous states could in theory end up in Lake Ontario. While a trout trip down the Welland Canal, or over Niagara Falls seems unlikely, when PA was stocking some of the Erie tribs with the West Virginia developed Palomino strain rainbows, bright golden in color, they would occasionally show up in 18 mile, Oak Orchard, and even Russell Station when the power plant was still there.
The bottom line is that all rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) are covered by the regulation. Otherwise, the Encon officers are dealing with people like the guy I encountered at Thornell Road in Pittsford not long after the annual steelhead stocking of Irondequoit Creek, who was loading up a bread bag with the smolts, and claimed they were brook trout, as steelhead were big and ran the stream in the winter, and the fish he was harvesting in number were small and it was May.
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Lots of stuff here! I'm only going to shoot at a couple of things.
Botulism is ubiquitous in the marine environment. The organism that causes it is anaerobic, it will only develop in an oxygen free environment, and the ideal environment for that development is a dead organism. The most accepted theory for proliferation in Lakes Erie and Ontario is that Dreissenids that continually colonize the same places build layers of live organisms on top of older ones, who eventually die and provide a place for the Botulism organism to develop, and as decomposition of the organism continues and the C. Botulinum keeps growing, toxins build up, which are eventually carried to the surface of the colony by upwelling processes, where they kill living mussels, which are then ingested by feeding gobies (or any other fish that feeds on Mussels, like freshwater drum), who then are eaten by diving fish eating birds, especially loons, grebes, and mergansers.
When undertaking environmental restoration, one method of evaluating the success of the remediation is the degree to which the natural system that existed before the degradation has been restored. One method proposed for conducting the evaluation is to identify an indicator species native to the ecosystem, and monitor the status of the species. In the Rochester Embayment Area of Concern, the Habitat Oversight Committee proposed adopting native species in different trophic levels as indicators of restoration. The Trout Unlimited Representative to that Committee proposed that Atlantic Salmon restoration should be the indicator for the Genesee River, but research on River history identified little indication that there had ever been significant returns of Atlantic Salmon to the Genesee, as it is a fairly warm river due to low slope and its length, even when it was mostly shaded. However, histories of the Rochester area are full of accounts of the Sturgeon run in the river. Chris Lowie of USF+WS Amherst was also on this committee and he suggested that USF+WS might undertake an evaluation of the habitat to see if it would be suitable for sturgeon, as a first step in possible getting a reintroduction going. Dr. Dawn Dittman and Emily Zolweg, while she was still in school, did an evaluation that showed good substrate and a benthic biomass sufficient for sturgeon, and Dr. Dittman has been integral to this joint USGS and NYSDEC Project since. Efforts were also supported in the Fish Community Objectives for Lake Ontario, for sturgeon, as well as, to some extent, Lake Trout and Atlantic Salmon, which are 2 of the three traditional top level predators. As sturgeon are a shallow water dweller, despite their size, they should have no impact on the Pelagic species, so I fail to understand the concern. And while they are massive in size at maturity, diet studies indicate that their main food source is invertebrates, in the Genesee mainly chironomids (midges)
People are talking another hatchery, or expansion of how fish are handled at Altmar. The major issue I see with Altmar, or any other place for another facility, is water. The SR Hatchery is at its limits on what water it can get, and is now exploring methods of reuse. Any new hatchery location would require a large, cold clean water source, and I'm personally not aware of any that the potable people haven't identified flowing into Lake Ontario.
Upper management at NYSDEC is definitely interested in the size issue, and a study of the caloric content of alewife has been indicated as needed, as any data on that is at least 10 years old.
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On 9/12/2023 at 12:54 AM, rolmops said:
The Powder Mill hatchery is privately owned and has potentially been infected by a fish killing virus so it is unlikely to be used for Atlantic salmon.
The Powder Mill hatchery is owned by the County of Monroe. It is operated by the Reidman Foundation under a cooperative agreement.
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Brian, Cisco were stocked by USF+WS in Irondequoit Bay and Sodus Bay for some amount of time (post 70, memory for numbers gets cloudy, why I like hard copy reports). According to Web Persall, (Region 8 Fisheries Manager), last night, there are no longer Ciscoes going in, but Bloaters continue to be raised. Maybe the Cisco program was discontinued when Mr. Johnson retired, but there is a gap in reporting, it would be nice to see the results of the project.
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Brian, I have to laugh hearing the DEC concern about predation by esocids on out-migrating smolts in Irondequoit Creek. When USGS and Monroe County proposed the use of the Irondequoit Creek Wetlands as a nutrient control area at the conclusion of the Nationwide Urban Runoff program in the early 80s, NYSDEC objected to the proposal to install a weir because the ponded area could provide habitat for predators to prey on smolts, too. When the permit was finally granted after nearly 18 years, the objection was that the project would negatively impact esocid habitat and spawning. So they have come 360%, and as I recall based on the opinion of one biologist, not on any data. But say there are predators in IC, they are also there in Sandy, and the thermal regime in Sandy would appear to me to insure that survival of fry to smolt is highly unlikely, while the thermal regime of IC allows stocked fish to survive down into Ellison Park, and so might actually support Salar juveniles. I also wonder if the discussion of spawning sites took into consideration the stream temperatures in July and August. When the experimental stocking in Irondequoit Creek was done, the biologists said the fish would run and spawn in the fall. They spawned in the fall, but they were in the stream the first year of return right after an early July rainstorm. Many bellied up from thermal stress even in IC, and for subsequent seasons DEC closed the stream to fishing for the summer months. I think it is guaranteed that this will occur in an even warmer stream like Sandy.
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Well, Yogi, "County delegates" implies that the Counties had something to do with it, and the Counties had nothing to do with either group as you describe it.
Gill, I'm all for more Atlantics, but if the goal is to get them sustaining, Sandy Creek hasn't got the temperatures. Irondequoit Creek does.
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Yogibare, where do you get the idea that the Lake Ontario Committee members are County Delegates? Have you ever seen a membership list or seen a press release about this group? Prior to Steve LaPan's retirement, there was another Lake Ontario Committee, which consisted of 12 Americans and 12 Canadians, and this group was not chosen at the county level but to represent various stakeholder groups, so consisted mainly of charter captains and tributary anglers from all 4 regions, and served as input to Steve and Andy Miner for their role on the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. We started meeting via zoom due to the logistics issues of getting such a large group to one place along our "inland sea", then Steve retired, and I, for one, never heard anything else. I am sure some of the membership was moved on, I can't imagine Captains Songin or Perleoni not having a voice for the west end of the Lake. But I also serve on our county Fisheries Advisory Board, and the existence of this new NYS group was news to us (2 of us were on the GLFC panel) when one of the members visited a meeting and started talking about the Atlantic Salmon Plan, which seems to me came out of the clear blue sky in light of the stocking reductions of the last 4 or so years. I watched the Power Points, I must have dozed off as I don't recall anything about an increase in King Stocking. Maybe this was added to the program as a " bone" to soften the memory of the stocking cuts and cushion the "new" Atlantic Salmon program. At any rate, this will get discussed at the MCFAB meeting, via zoom, on Monday.
I agree with Rick about the poor communications, it was short notice, very poorly communicated, and there are much better times to get people's attention than Southern Zone Deer Season. Unless you want to avoid the tough questions.
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MCFAB was notified by Steve Olufsen, but I think he, like Rolmops and me, is on the DEC mailing list.
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November 12. Likely would not have been much help without the power point pre-work. And very easy to fo9rget during deer season.
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Lakes, and multispecies.
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Is it an old sewing machine? The foot controlled on/ off function would work great, but where do I find a 12 volt sewing machine?
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I asked because the backdrop in your picture is all snow, likely after October 15, and before April 1, not to say it isn't a splake from Limekiln, where ice fishing is legal.
I'm not aware of any of the ponds in the Brook Trout program that are open to ice fishing, although that doesn't deter poachers on snowmobiles.
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Hey Hounds, where do you go for pond brook trout when there is still snow on the ground?
perch/spot lock question
in Finger Lakes Discussion
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It's not just perch fishermen, the guys that would boat up to the pool at Goudy Station on the Susquehanna below Johnson City used to attach the balloon to a walleye, and follow it around. I saw shore fishermen try it too, but it could be very frustrating when the balloon moved out of range.