Technical Bulletin No. 0856: Long-Term Receiving Water Study Data Compendium: September 1999 to August 2000

The NCASI Long-Term Receiving Water Study (LTRWS), begun in 1998, is a 10- to 20- year project involving four different U.S. receiving waters. The LTRWS objectives are to evaluate possible differences in the aquatic community upstream/downstream of representative point source effluent discharges from pulp and paper mills. The experimental design includes multiple sampling sites and variables for each of the receiving waters in the study. The measured components include water and effluent chemistry, characterization of the effluents with chronic bioassays, river temperature and flow, solar radiation, and detailed measurements of the periphyton, benthic macroinvertebrates and fish communities. This report is an overview of the findings for the period September 1999 to August 2000, the second year of the study. The data collected at Codorus Creek, Pennsylvania, during this time included four sampling dates along eight sampling sites for biotic community data; 12 sampling dates along six sites for water quality data and seven sampling dates for mill effluent. Among the findings for Codorus Creek were four divisions of periphyton, 191 macroinvertebrate taxa, and 36 fish taxa. The Leaf River, Mississippi, had two sampling dates at six sampling sites for biotic community data; 12 sampling dates along six sites for water quality data and four sampling dates for mill effluent. Among the findings for the Leaf were 70 macroinvertebrate taxa and 31 fish taxa. The McKenzie River, Oregon, data included four sampling dates at six sampling sites for biotic community data; 12 sampling dates along five sites for water quality data and three sampling dates for mill effluent. Among the McKenzie findings were five divisions of periphyton, 215 macroinvertebrate taxa, and 16 fish taxa.