MUNCIE – It's called the White River, but record rainfall has kept the waterway muddy brown for most of the summer of 2015.
So what does this mean for the fish, our drinking water and recreation?
The stormy weather has dumped tons of eroded soil and debris from the surrounding landscape into the river, concealing food from bass and requiring more chemicals to treat the water for drinking purposes — in addition to discharging six times the volume of sewage into the river compared to last summer.
"The state considers this recreation season," said John Barlow, superintendent of the Muncie Sanitary District's Water Pollution Control Facility.
But the district repeatedly has been issuing CSO (combined sewer overflow) notices to inform the public of the potential dangers associated with sewage in the river.
The volume of Muncie's CSO discharges in June of 2014 totaled 35 million gallons. This June the volume reached 200 million gallons.
"When I say 200 million gallons, that's not 200 million gallons of raw sewage," Barlow said. "It's greatly diluted. It's mostly storm water. But it does contain E. coli (bacteria)."
Barlow suspects the muddy water has been more challenging to Indiana-American Water Co., which relies on White River for Muncie's drinking water.
"They're pulling water from the river and filtering and disinfecting it before sending it out for all of us to use at our homes," Barlow said. "They have to use it as their product. We don't take anything from the river; we just discharge to it."