Brentwood-Oakley: Hundreds of Dead Fish Found in Marsh Creek

The Friends of Marsh Creek Watershed announced Saturday that local residents alerted them to a dozen dead fish in Marsh Creek near Creekside Park in Oakley. Upon responding, they located about 100 dead fish between Oakley and Brentwood. They are now working with local and state agencies to find out what is causing the fish to die.

According to Diane Burgis, executive director for FOMCW, they have already been in contact with local State Agencies and will be releasing more information in the near future. They also have some of the fish in a cooler to be able to provide samples for testing.

The following message was sent out by the Friends of Marsh Creek:

Unfortunately today there was fish kill on Marsh Creek today. We thank the citizens that contacted us and made us aware of the situation. FOMCW staff and volunteers investigated the situation and determined that a fish kill occurred within the last 12 hours somewhere upstream of Delta Road but downstream of the fish ladder. We observed probably over a hundred dead fish between Laurel Road and the Wastewater Treatment Plant. FOMCW will send out an email giving more information this week. If you haven’t subscribed to our newsletter please do so by visiting our website at fomcw.org. We have been in touch with the authorities and made them aware. Different agencies are investigating the situation. FOMCW has a partnership with the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board that allows us to assist in water sampling, water quality monitoring and carcass collection in the event of a fish kill. Today we collected carcasses for the various agencies investigating. We hope the tissue samples will give us more information on what occurred to kill off the fish. We will have more pictures soon too.