Dead duck mystery widens

Todd Hartman, Rocky Mountain News

Published February 5, 2007 at midnight

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A weeks-old mystery over dead ducks at the Metro Wastewater Reclamation District plant in northeast Denver has widened.

Dead ducks have been discovered in at least two other locales in the region.

A state Division of Wildlife spokeswoman said Monday that deceased ducks showing evidence of malnutrition and degraded waterproofing — leading to death from hypothermia — have also been found at the Northglenn wastewater plant and at a lake within a residential development near the 9000 block of E. Mississippi Ave. in southeast Denver.

At and around the Metro wastewater plant, the total number of dead ducks had climbed to 418 as of Monday morning.

Officials at the facility also announced that dead or injured ducks have been found along the South Platte River, both upstream and downstream of the Metro plant at 6450 York St. in northeast Denver.

Investigators have ruled out avian flu, Metro officials said. Experts have also examined the ducks’ organs for disease, but found none, said Jennifer Churchill, a spokesman for the Division of Wildlife’s northeastern Colorado region.

"We’ve mostly just found things it’s not." Churchill said. "We know it’s not avian influenza, it’s not avian cholera. We’re doing a test for botulism, but don’t think it’s that." Ducks have been sent to both a state veterinary lab in Fort Collins, as well as a lab affiliated with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Oregon.

In almost all cases, the species affected were northern shovelers, Churchill said, with a few cases involving gadwalls.

Mallards were not affected, she said. The cases reported in Northglenn involved 30 to 40 ducks, and about 22 ducks at the Breakers Resort in southeast Denver.

The long run of cold weather could be connected to the deaths, Churchill said, but that’s only a theory. Ducks are used to handling all kinds of weather, but it’s possible a food source has become unavailable to the animals. Furthermore, there’s some evidence the deaths have decreased with a dose of warmer weather in the last few days, she said.

"The deaths of these ducks continue to puzzle us all," said Steve Rogowski, director of operations and maintenance at the Metro wastewater facility, in a statement issued this morning. "We are working with the Colorado Division of Wildlife and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to try to find the cause."

Metro workers are also trying to rescue stricken ducks.

"We’ve placed an emphasis on recovery of any sick ducks that we find," Rogowski said. As of today, Metro employees had turned 84 sick or injured ducks over to two DOW-approved rehabilitation centers, officials said in a statement.

Water quality scientists with Metro found "a number" of dead ducks as they walked along the South Platte last week, from upstream of Metro’s plant at 64th Avenue and York Street to the river’s confluence with Clear Creek.

It's not clear that anything at the wastewater plant is responsible. "We have seen duck carcasses upstream of the plant ... (investigators) saw plenty of them along the river, enough to make you say whatever's happening is not just happening at Metro. That's what it would lead me to believe," said Steve Frank, a spokesman for the facility.

"We hope we can get this problem resolved soon. Protecting the environment, including wildlife, is among our top priorities," added Rogowskii.

Metro is the primary water treatment facility for the Denver area, serving 1.5 million people and treating about 130 million gallons of wastewater per day.

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