A new invasive mussel threat is posing as a potential menace to the Okanagan watershed.
Already efforts have been initiated in recent years by the Okanagan Basin Water Board (OBWB) to step up monitoring for quagga and zebra mussels attached to watercraft entering B.C. waters, but a new foe of concern has been added to that list - the golden mussel.
Native to China, the golden mussels have made their way by attaching onto freighters, to U.S. waters, detected in a Sacramento delta in California, a source of the water for a massive water distribution system across the state's Central Valley agricultural region spanning 450 miles.
Speaking at the second annual Okanagan-Interior Invasive Mussel Working Group forum held in Kelowna on Friday (Nov. 14), James Littley, the OBWB chief operating officer and local expert on invasive mussels, said he had not even heard about the golden mussel threat until he learned about the California problem.
Littley said golden mussels tends to be more adaptable to water temperature, oxygen and calcium levels than quagga or zebra mussels, but the risk impact assessments no longer apply, meaning their impact on a watersheds such as the Okanagan is exponentially worse.
Studies by the province have already cited the economic impact at $64 million to $129 million annually in cost for quagga and zebra mussels, with no solution to eradicate their presence.
Like the quagga and zebra mussels, the golden mussel is not native to North America, originating in Chinese and southeastern Asia rivers and creeks.
It became established in Hong Kong in 1965, in Japan and Taiwan in the 1990s, and invaded the Plata Basin in South America in 1991.
While small in size at under 1/2 to two inches, once it enters a body of water, it basically attaches itself to most available substrates, and often forms colonies with densities greater than 80,000/square metre.
As an interloper into foreign habitat waters, golden mussels clog intakes, pipes and filters of water treatment facilities, industrial plants and power stations.
That leads to increased operational costs because the facilities need to be shut down to clean out mussels, shell material and sediment.
Or as is the case with zebra mussel infestation in the Great Lakes, infrastructure must be twinned or duplicated to ensure when one system is down, another is able to fill in due to the frequency of mussel removal servicing.
Further, decaying mussels emit a noxious odour and pollute drinking water systems, while empty shells add to the fouling problem.
Its high reproductive capacity means that golden mussel populations essentially suffocate and starve out local ecosystem invertebrates and plants in altering the habitat.
Littley has been at the forefront of the OBWB advocacy effort to heighten boat inspections at provincial border points to northwest U.S. states and Alberta.
He says existing boat inspection efforts dating back to 2015 have intercepted 180 watercraft bound for B.C. waters with attached mussel infestations.
It is a similar scenario to the milfoil being introduced into the Okanagan watershed, with no way to kill them off beyond harvesting the growth as a control measure.
Concerns were heightened two years ago when a mussel infestation was detected in a section of Idaho's Snake River, part of the Columbia River basin which the Okanagan watershed is also connected with.
Idaho department of agriculture officials revealed last week no viable quagga mussels have been found since the most recent copper-based treatment in the Snake River this fall.
While the results were encouraging, Idaho department of agriculture director Chanel Tewalt says it is not known yet if the copper-based chemical used to kill the invasive mussels has succeeded.
The second treatment of the river across a 3.5 mile section was preceded by water sampling which showed the infestation portion of the Snake River was about half the previous year.
However, with the water temperatures cooling due to the arrival of colder weather, Tewalt says the mussels will stop reproducing again until the weather warms again next summer or into the fall.
That means officials may not know exactly how effective this most recent treatment has been until water samples taken at that time have been analyzed.
Littley says the toxic nature of the treatment has killed all the native fish in the treated section of the river, while giving the river a clean bill of health from mussels will require five years of no detection in water sampling.