wwltv.com (excerpts):  Bogalusa, LA - Dead fish lined the river at Pear River near Bogalusa Saturday.  Tiny catfish gasped for breath at the surface.  Other vital wildlife, including muscles, turtles and eels had washed ashore.  It's something L.K. Jones has never seen here before.  "The water's black, black as paint, dead fish floating everywhere; it's unreal," said Jones, who lives nearby.  Neighbors noticed a film over the river several days ago.  Saturday morning, the dark, foamy water proved deadly.  "I run three nets this morning, tuck 'em up; they had at least 200-250 pounds of dead fish per net, no live ones at all," said Freddy Lawrence, a longtime Washington Parish Fisherman.  Now multiple agencies from Mississippi and Louisiana are investigating.  The source of the dark liquid appears to be a pipeline a few miles up the river.  The water color and quality, officials say, changes drastically downriver from the pipeline, and one can see the dark liquid bubbling up beneath the surface.  Officials say that the pipeline belongs to Temple-Inland, an Austin-based company with a paper plant in Bogalusa.  Officials say the company's allowed to discharge a certain amount of the liquid into the river, but they've never seen the water so black.  "I would suggest people stay off the water until we can find out what happened," said Sgt. Darryl Galloway, enforcement division of the Louisiana Department of  Wildlife and Fisheries.  At this point, authorities aren't prepared to say the plant caused the fish kill, but DEQ said Temple-Inland did have a problem Tuesday with the operations waste water plant, causing them to exceed the daily maximum for biochemical oxygen demand, which measures the amount of oxygen organisms use to break down waste.  Now DEQ says water oxygen levels below the pipeline are too low for fish to survive.  "You can look at the water, look at the foam when a boat goes by; that's not normal," said Lawrence.  "It's something happening with the paper mill."  DEQ officials said Temple-inland has been working to fix issues at their waste water treatment facility.  According to DEQ, the plant is starting to stabilize, but is still having problems.  Officials said the effects can already be seen 20 miles downriver, near Picayune, Mississippi, but so far, DEQ officials have collected only one fish to test.  They say the others appeared to be sitting for days, dead too long to sample; and they hope in the future residents will report anything unusual as soon as they see it.  Officials said they didn't learn of the fish kill until Saturday morning.  "The thing I'm worried about is the long-term effects," said Lawrence.  Officials said they're not sure how long it will take to figure out what caused this, or how to fix it.


Commentary:  For whatever reasons fish are dying all around the world, causation appears to be irrelevant, because the Bible says the fish are going to "be taken away."  It is relevant in the sense that if this mill is killing the fish, and I think a blind person can see that, they need to stop dumping waste in the river.  It doesn't seem appropriate that any business should be dumping waste into natural rivers in the first place!  The Word of God tells us that "The land will mourn and everyone that dwells in it will languish, with the beasts of the field, the fowls of heaven; yes, the fishes of the sea will also be taken away" Hosea 4:3.  The prophet Hosea was speaking about the last days in chapter 4, that these will be signs of the end times.  We are seeing them happen now right before our eyes.  "I will show wonders in heaven above and signs in the earth beneath; blood, fire and vapor of smoke" Acts 2:19.