Last year, on the evening of November 8, 2015 or the early morning of November 9, something strange happened in the waters of Middle River, MD: a fish kill occurred that led to the death of nearly 200,000 fish, with early reports pointing to an algae bloom as the culprit. But many locals remain skeptical, and nearly a year later, we still do not have a definitive answer as to what caused the bloom. One such local is Scott Sewell, an avid fisherman who serves as the conservation director for Maryland Bass Nation. For Scott, blaming the 2015 Middle River fish kill on a bloom “just doesn’t pass the smell test.” And he won’t stop until he has an answer.
Sewell has lived in Baltimore County his whole life. He grew up on a farm that bordered a creek off of Back River and has been fishing since he was old enough to hold a rod. “I had my own boat and motor by the time I was 10 years old. I learned to catch fish, crabs, and turtles in that little creek, and as I got older, I was fortunate to have family members who took me with them in pursuit of other species of fish on the Bay. When I was old enough to drive, I traveled all over Maryland to fish in rivers, ponds, reservoirs, and even beaches in Ocean City and Delaware. As an adult, my passion for fishing has taken me all over the eastern half of the U.S., the Atlantic Ocean, and the Gulf of Mexico, in pursuit of everything from trout in little streams to marlin offshore.”
Sewell’s lifelong love of fishing has made him an avid conservationist, and since 1999, he has served as the conservation director for Maryland Bass Nation. Through that position, he has been restocking Middle River and its tributaries with largemouth bass each year, hoping to create a thriving and sustainable fishery.
Sewell purchases thousands of juvenile bass and replenishes the Upper Bay tributaries, alongside the MD DNR’s own restocking efforts. For the last five or six years, MD Bass Nation has also begun purchasing bass over 10 inches long so they won’t be eaten before they can grow large enough to be fished. The larger bass cost $10 a piece. These costly efforts were first brought about by a major fish kill that occurred 15 years earlier.
In the winter of 1999, a fish kill occurred in almost the exact same spot as the one that happened last November. The water was frozen, but Sewell remembers being able to look through the ice and see the dead fish lying on the bottom. At the time, anonymous calls were placed to the MD Bass Nation that spoke of a hidden drain pipe that flowed into Cowpen Creek from the parking lot of a chemical company off of Martin Boulevard. But the official report from the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) stated that the fish kill was caused by a sudden salt wedge that moved up the Bay. Fast forward to 2015, with nearly 200,000 fish killed in almost the exact same area as in 1999, near the concealed discharge pipe.
On November 11, Sewell received a call regarding hundreds of dead fish in the area surrounding Wilson Point Park in Baltimore County. After riding out there in his boat, he found hundreds of dead and dying fish all along the shoreline. Sewell posted a video of the carnage on Facebook, which soon went viral among Marylanders. He then reached out to the DNR and MDE to investigate. The next day, Sewell took two MDE investigators out on the water to take water samples and collect dead fish to necropsy. According to him, investigators claimed it was a typical algae bloom, or possibly even a salt wedge (as was claimed in 1999), but Sewell was not so easily convinced.
“I didn’t believe it 15 years ago, and I don’t believe it now. The water was crystal clear; I’ve never seen an algae bloom like that in the winter.”
On November 13, a local resident took Sewell to the discharge pipe that empties directly into Cowpen Creek from the chemical company parking lot. The pipe is hard to see from land, but after walking the shoreline of the creek, Sewell remembers, “The odor from the pipe was so strong you could smell it from 100 feet away.”
According to the MDE report published in February 2016: “A small trickle of grayish water, with a mild organic-chemical odor was found discharging from an old eight-inch iron pipe. This pipe is shown on historical site map records to be an outfall from Tilley Chemical stormwater pond as provided by Tilley Chemical to MDE.”
MDE investigators took samples from the pipe, as did Sewell. The cause of the fish kill was officially reported to be “gill damage and respiratory failure caused by karlotoxin, a fish killing toxin produced by a bloom of the dinoflagellate, Karlodinium veneficum.” MDE mentions the concerns of local citizens regarding the discharge pipe but asserts that “No evidence of a discharge that could have caused a fish kill was found. Furthermore, this fish kill took place nearly simultaneously in several remote tributaries. It is impossible for a toxic discharge to travel from one affected location, undiluted, to the other locations without many tidal flows and ebbs over several days. The timing of events and geographical remoteness of the affected areas clearly points to environmental conditions endemic to the Middle River system as the source of the stressor(s) that concentrated and killed more than 200,000 fish.”
But Sewell refuses to rest until he knows for sure. He asserts that he’s “no conspiracy theorist;” he is simply being thorough. And even if discharge from the pipe was not enough to cause a fish kill, it could still be hazardous. Sewell decided to take his own samples from the water surrounding the pipe after receiving several claims that the company sometimes has spills that find their way down the pipe and into Cowpen Creek.
This level of commitment on Scott’s part should come as no surprise, as he was a state trooper for 20 years and a U.S. Marshall for five. He knows a thing or two about investigative work.
“I’ve got investigation in my blood. I’m naturally suspicious. I love the environment, and I love this river. I’m not going to rest until that pipe is closed.”