The quantity of invertebrate communities (insects and small organisms without a backbone) has been on the decline for the last 20 years on most waters in the US and the world.  The reasons are many and varied but to put it bluntly: We are destroying every single piece of water on earth with a chemical toxic soup!  Most of these toxins we don’t even test for. In Pennsylvania we are number 1 in water pollution every year.  The reason for this is simple: Pennsylvania issues the most NPDES (National Pollution Discharge Elimination System) permits.  Overall Pennsylvania is in the top 10 of just about every type of pollution.  This soup from the air, water, and land ends up in our streams and has cumulative and synergistic effects.

Basically the results show that invertebrate communities  are being destroyed by sedimentation, organics, toxins and variety of inputs that the streams and rivers never evolved to breakdown.  The fly hatches on the famed Pennsylvania Spring Creeks on which I have studied more than anyone are down over 60 to 70 percent since my late friends Charlie Fox and Vince Marinaro wrote their classic books.

Of course, who issues these NPDES permits?  The DEP (Department of Environmental Protection) and the EPA issue the permits and the standards which for the most part are chemical parameters are basically worthless.  It has always amazed me that so many fly fisherman have naive ideas that there streams and rivers exist in a vacuum from the politics of pollution.   That’s okay I predicted this stuff almost 30 years ago and in a few years we may have little quality fly fishing left.

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