'Increasing number of dead fish' collected in ditches after Nippon spill

As crews continue efforts to mitigate environmental impacts from the deadly spill of papermaking chemicals at Longview's Nippon Dynawave plant, federal and state environmental officials are asking locals to keep reporting dead wildlife they see in nearby ditches and canals.

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Brooks Stanfield, a federal on-scene coordinator with the Environmental Protection Agency, said in a press conference Saturday afternoon that the number of dead fish spotted in the canal network off Industrial Way "has steadily increased day to day."

"We've seen an increasing number of those dead fish," he said. "We continue to observe those ourselves, and we're getting reports through our hotline that are reporting in dead fish."

The reports through the hotline are helping state and federal environmental crews direct their resources, investigate the areas and recover wildlife where they can.

"Other than those dead fish, there have been a few tadpoles and other small wildlife such as that that have been observed, but that is the extent of what we've observed in terms of wildlife impacts," Stanfield said.

Federal and state environmental officials are encouraging people to keep reporting dead fish and other wildlife observed in the ditches and canal network connected to the Industrial Way mill by calling the designated hotline at 1-800-22-BIRDS or 1-800-222-4737. Officials advise people not to collect the dead wildlife themselves.

Courtney Serad, the on-scene coordinator with the Washington State Department of Ecology, added at Saturday's press conference that those "vast numbers of reports" are "continuing to help us target our efforts.

"We have had reports of fish predominantly in the ditches, and the vast majority of those fish are carp," Serad said.

Access remains a challenge in some areas, and Serad said the agency has been "working on other alternatives" to collect those dead fish.

"We continue to be successful in doing that," Serad said, adding that "the majority of the fish that we are collecting are closer to the ditches."

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