Georgia river filled with dead fish after mysterious black muck found on shore banks

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:01]This river is a huge part of my life and I've dedicated my life to protecting this river system. I grew up on this river.

[00:00:09]>> For riverkeeper Jason Ols, the Chattahuchi is a special place full of life. But Friday morning, he found something else.

[00:00:16]>> I've been patrolling this stretch of river weekly for 20 years. Never seen anything like it. For 20 miles downstream of the Chattahuchi River National Recreational Area, Jason Ols found the banks coated in black muck and thousands >> big old pile of them >> and thousands of dead fish.

[00:00:33]>> I've never seen that out here. I've never seen a fish kill of this magnitude ever.

[00:00:39]>> Ols says after the massive flash flooding on Wednesday, some sewage overflowed into the river, causing the oxygen levels to drop.

[00:00:47]>> But when the oxygen crashes like that, there's nowhere to hide. Essentially, every species of fish in that stretch of the Chattahuchi suffocated, leaving a place usually full of nature practically lifeless.

[00:00:59]>> The oxygen levels are now returning.

[00:01:03]Um, but the damage is done.

[00:01:05]>> Friday afternoon, Georgia's Department of Natural Resources took to the river to take samples of the fish and water, trying to figure out exactly what happened and see what can be done in the future. It'll be a matter of figuring out exactly what the cause was and making sure we get this fixed so it never happens again.

[00:01:22]>> I've never seen anything this devastating on any water system.

[00:01:27]>> That's Jason Ols, the executive director of the Chattahuchi River Keeper. He says the longunning drought caused the river to flow at an extremely low level. Then Wednesday's storm hit when three inches of rain dumped on Atlanta in less than an hour. He says very warm and polluted storm water along with treated and untreated sewage gushed into Peach Tree Creek, then into the river.

[00:01:51]>> The volume of the storm water in the sewage was significantly more than the volume of the water in the river.

[00:01:58]>> Seth says it wasn't the toxicity of the sewage and storm water, but the high temperature of the deluge that killed the fish. The warmer the water, the less oxygen it contains, causing fish to suffocate. All of these combining factors just made for the perfect storm and caused a massive fish kill on Chattahuchi.

[00:02:17]>> He also found black muck coating the river banks from miles downstream of Peach Tree Creek. He says that likely came from Atlanta's 8m long West area tunnel which stores raw sewage and storm water runoff to be treated later. It's designed to keep older sewer lines from getting overwhelmed in heavy rain. The problem on Wednesday was that the tunnel completely filled and then overflowed directly into Peach Tree Creek in the Chattahuchi.

[00:02:41]>> The oxygen levels are now returning.

[00:02:44]Um, but the damage is done. It'll be a matter of figuring out exactly what the cause was and making sure we get this fixed so it never happens again.