Thousands of fish die in Chattahoochee after Atlanta flood and sewage overflow

Stormwater overflow from Atlanta’s flood on Wednesday resulted in thousands of fish in the Chattahoochee River being killed.

The damage of the floodwaters spans for around 20 miles.

Jason Ulseth, the executive director of the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, said he has never seen anything like it. The combination of the drought leading to near-historic lows for the river and the overflow of sewage and pollution into the river lowered oxygen levels in the water suffocating the fish, he said.

Ulseth said the killed fish have major consequences for the environment.

“Other animals that eat the fish, depend on the fish for their well-being. And, you know, there’s a lot of fishermen in this stretch and people are upset. I’m very upset because I’m a fisherman, and going down the river and seeing these trophy fish that are just dead because of something that, you know, we’ve been trying to control for so long,” he said.

Ulseth pointed to climate change as a major factor of the flooding.

“Storms like we got on Wednesday, that supercell dropped three inches of rain in less than an hour. We’re only supposed to see storms like that once every 150 years. Based off of all of our historic data here in metro Atlanta, we’ve had three of those in the last five years,” he said. “We are very concerned that climate change is intensifying our rainstorms and causing a lot of problems at home here on the Chattahoochee River and its lakes.”

Ulseth said the next steps are to find out why this flood caused so much damage to the river and potential solutions to prevent more damage in the future.