Dead Fish Mystery Under Investigation
UPDATE: This morning, a crew from Highland Park’s Town Services was deployed to clean up the unusual collection of dead fish at Lakeside Park.
The town has already contacted the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, HP public information officer Sgt. Lance Koppa said.
Per procedure, Koppa said that they would send samples of the water and the fish, which predominantly seemed to be 1 to 3-inch shad, to both agencies.
They don’t know yet what the cause of death was, but it probably had something to do with runoff from the deluge on Thursday after our prolonged dry spell, Koppa said.
He emphasized that it’s not a definitive answer, but that when accumulated waste, landscaping chemicals, and decomposing vegetation in the street was washed downstream, it could have led the water to deoxygenate, killing the fish.
We’ll keep you posted if we learn anything else.
……and since the Town of Highland Park has contacted the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the TPWD, maybe Sgt. Koppa can ask them if it were appropriate and/or even legal for construction workers hired by HP to dump contaminated white buckets into Hackberry Creek for water to use while cutting the street pavement on Beverly Drive at Drexel Drive?
I don’t believe the wildlife appreciated that either nor was it reported as required. The wildlife thanks you Mayor Joel Williams III?