May 10, 2004
Rain Brings Heavy Silt Flow to Byrne Creek
Executive Summary: A heavy rain resulted in a silty, dark brown flow in Byrne Creek today, with water visibility in pools down to about 10cm. It looked like a river of chocolate milk.
I called it in to the city. Environmental services officers checked up on it, and advised me that there were similar flows in many Burnaby creeks today, and chalked it up to the rain.
I could see schools of fry swimming at the surface of the sediment pond, and the occasional coho smolt/cutthroat jumper, but no mortalities, so the fish were surviving.
Details: I reached the bottom of the stairs in the ravine in light rain at about 10:35. The water was nearly opaque, with a dark brown flow. At 11:00, still in light rain, the flow out of the culvert under Southridge Dr. into the sediment pond was brown and visibility was nearly zero. Just as I was recording a water-flow gauge reading, the sediment pond began to overflow.
On a good day, the water in the above photo would look crystal clear.
I decided to backtrack. At 12:00 Griffiths Pond near Edmonds Skytrain station was murky and the flow from the fish ladder was very bubbly. At 12:15 Susan's Pond was murky, however the inflow didn't look that bad.
I checked the pipes under Griffiths Ave. and the Edmonds line was dirty as usual, yet the pipe that passes the creek beneath the street was even dirtier. That's when I called it in to the city, and the rain stopped at about the same time.
I returned home and had lunch, and then drove down to the sediment pond, concerned about the smolts schoolkids released into the creek last week. At 1:10 p.m. I couldn't see any mortalities. I saw smolt-sized fish jumping, and fry swimming near the surface, leaving ripples behind their schools.
Levels were down considerably from an hour and a half earlier, with the surface about 12-15cm below overflow. I took another gauge reading.
I walked the spillway and found 4 dead chum fry that had floated over and were trapped when the water receded.
I drove down to the Fraser Foreshore Park to check the outflow, and at 2:30 there was a dark sediment plume extending from the creek, distinctly visible at least 5-7 meters out into the river. There was a lot of stuff going down the creek today!
