Hundreds of fish have been found dead in the Trinity River following last week’s water main break in the southwest quadrant of downtown Fort Worth.
Officials are attributing the dead fish to the rivers of chlorinated water that poured through city streets in Fort Worth on Thursday from a large water main break on West Lancaster Avenue, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
Footage captured by the city’s water department showed thousands of gallons of city tap water gushing from the ground, flowing down streets, and disrupting traffic.
The Fort Worth Water Department reported a day later that the 30-inch pipe had been repaired and that service was restored. However, the water main break had an unintended impact on the nearby Trinity River, the closest outlet for the downtown area’s storm drain system.
High concentrations of chlorinated water are toxic to fish, according to fish care expert Dr. Jessie Sanders.
By Thursday afternoon, staff at TC Paddlesports began spotting dead fish floating in the river. Teresa Patterson, the manager of the kayak and canoe rental business at Panther Island Pavilion, took pictures of the dead fish and reported the problem to the city, according to the Fort Worth Report.
“Drinking water has chlorine, and this volume was so much, we were not surprised it happened,” said the city, per WFAA.
Patterson, who is also a paddle trail manager for the Trinity Coalition, said that the area where the tap water drained into the river was a “low-flow” section of the waterway, thus exacerbating the effects of the chlorine.
“Any large amount of chlorinated water is going to have an outsize impact on the wildlife there because there’s not as much water to dilute it,” said Patterson, according to FWR. “If it was in a larger water body, a bigger lake or river with more flow to it, it has a better chance of diluting.”
As reported by The Dallas Express, thousands of gallons of likely chlorinated water also leaked from an underground pipe in Dallas, creating a clear swamp and impacting the wildlife in the Great Trinity Forest.
Mary Gugliuzza, a spokesperson for Fort Worth’s water department, told FWR that normally crews would place dechlorination tablets on the ground after a main break to neutralize the effects of the chlorine. However, the massive volume of water surging from this particular break would have rendered these efforts useless.
“It was moving so swiftly, and there was such a volume that it would not have served a purpose. I don’t know if we would have had enough for the volume of water,” said Gugliuzza, according to FWR.
The city is collecting the dead fish, classifying them by species, and has notified the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department of the incident.