N.D. reservoir suffers mass fish kill after downpour

COLUMBUS, N.D. (AP) — State officials are trying to figure out what caused thousands of fish to die at a popular reservoir in northwest North Dakota.

The fish in the Short Creek Dam reservoir died after a downpour in the Columbus area late last week. The water has turned dark and smelly, and some shoreline vegetation is black.

“It just made me ill. The whole shoreline was pretty much solid with dead fish and it was stinking like a lagoon,” Shannon Burau, a member of the Columbus Sportsmen’s Club, said Wednesday. “It was just a disaster, a disaster. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Club members speculated that rain runoff raised the temperature of the water too high or that something was washed into the 108-acre reservoir. Short Creek flows through farm land and areas of oil development.

“I don’t want to point the finger at anybody,” Burau said. “There’s just no oxygen in the water.”

The state Game and Fish and Health departments are investigating. Dennis Fewless, director of the Health Department’s water quality division, said testing of the water will take a few weeks.

“Usually you get a rain and it’s wonderful,” Burau said. “When you see perch swimming up onto the shore to get out of the water, you know something is wrong.”

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