100% of the fish in Arizona's San Carlos Lake are dead. It's not the 1st time this has happened

LAUREN GILGER: San Carlos Lake is all but gone. Dried up. The fish are belly up. And it seemed to happen overnight.

The body of water a few hours east of Phoenix is closed off and the San Carlos Recreation and Wildlife Department says it will be closed until further notice. That’s because there was what officials called a "major fish kill affecting approximately 100% of the fish population within the lake."

That’s right — 100% of the fish. They’re all dead. Authorities said drought on the lake coupled with releases of water from the dam caused the fish kill.

And our next guest said it’s not actually the first time this has happened there. Ron Dungan is a longtime Arizona environmental reporter —including here at KJZZ — and an author on Substack, where he wrote about San Carlos Lake.

He told The Show how he heard about the story.

RON DUNGAN: I was actually fishing a small lake on the San Carlos Apache Reservation when I heard about it, and I was with a group called the Desert Fly Casters, and we come off the water and there’s this tribal game warden checking permits. We got to talking, and I heard about the fish kill. When I got home, I saw the pictures in social media, and they’re pretty jarring.

LAUREN GILGER: It reminded him of the history of the lake, which he actually wrote about as part of his master’s thesis at ASU. And that’s where the conversation began.

RON DUNGAN: You first hear about this lake in Arizona history, at least the first time I came across it, was the territorial governor asked the feds to build a dam on the Gila River. And this was before Arizona was even a state.

So the idea got kicked around for quite a while. Of course, the state didn’t have any money to build it. That’s why they asked the feds to do it. Well, the feds wound up damming the Salt instead, so it would be a long time before they got around to damming the Gila. But they finally did in the 1920s.

The Pima Tribe had used the Gila River to water their crops for years, and when settlers upstream started to use that water, there wasn’t any left for the Pima. So the government decided to build this reservoir to store water, and that way farmers could irrigate and there would still be some water left over for the Pima. That sort of left the Apaches out. When the reservoir filled, it flooded out the old town of San Carlos and everything around it — farms, houses, graves. The tribe was really concerned about it.

So then James Kitch took over as superintendent, and he started to urge the feds to really take these concerns seriously. But they went ahead with it, and they named the dam after Coolidge when it looked like he might veto the project.

Ron Dungan

/

Handout

LAUREN GILGER: Calvin Coolidge, yeah.

RON DUNGAN: Calvin Coolidge, right. So they thought he might veto the project, and he, and in 1930, after he had left office, he helped dedicate the dam at a ceremony. Humorist Will Rogers was there as well, and the lake hadn’t filled up yet, and there were so many weeds growing in it that Rogers said, "If this was my lake, I’d mow it."

LAUREN GILGER: [LAUGHS] A humorist for sure. So I mean, this this long and kind of interesting history of this lake, Ron, I mean, it was built to supply farmers with water, and in fact, this is not the first time it’s dried out. But there are like serious ecological and environmental implications to that, right?

RON DUNGAN: Yeah, absolutely. This is not the first time the reservoir has run out of water. Local media reports say that it’s run out of water at least 20 times since it’s filled.

LAUREN GILGER: 20?

RON DUNGAN: Yeah, and and and I do know they’ve had fish kills before. More than 5 million fish died in 1976, according to one report. They had a fish kill in 2018, and I do remember in 2021 when the Telegraph Fire burned, the lake was so low that firefighters got their water from Roosevelt Lake.

LAUREN GILGER: So I mean, what exactly is the scientific cause, I guess, of this fish kill? Like, it’s drying up, there’s not enough water, and then also this release of water from the dam. I mean, what happens to kill the fish?

RON DUNGAN: Well, fish need oxygen. We don’t really think of that because they’re under water. We would, you know, drown if we were under there, but they’re equipped to take oxygen out of the water. And and they also need a certain chemistry, right? So if pH levels get off, if the temperature gets too high or too low, that can be hard on fish. You know, trout will die if the water gets too warm. It’s just too warm.

But in a situation like this, I would guess that there was just not enough oxygen, there could be other chemical factors involved. And you start running out of water, there’s just not enough for the fish to live on —

LAUREN GILGER: Have you ever fished San Carlos Lake?

RON DUNGAN: I have, very early when I moved here. It’s a big bass lake. It — I quickly learned it’s better if you have a big boat to get around on. But it is one of the first lakes that I did fish in Arizona. So not the first time there’s been a big fish kill on this particular lake, and also, Ron, this is not the only lake in the state or in the region that’s dried up recently, right?

RON DUNGAN: No. No, a lot of lakes in the state are in trouble right now. We’ll probably get some relief from the monsoon, but we’re supposed to get most of our water from snowpack. And it just hasn’t snowed much the last couple of winters.

I’ve heard that Sunrise Lake is not fishable because it’s so low. You can’t get a boat on it. The boat ramp at Lee Valley leads to nothing but dirt. One of the ramps at Big Lake is useless. Lower Lake Mary up by Flagstaff is completely dry. So it’s tough.

You know, a lot of us have been fishing in the White Mountains all winter long. I mean, normally if you live in the Valley, you stop going there in the late fall, early winter because the lakes ice up. Well, these past couple of winters, that hasn’t happened. I started going to the White Mountains in February. ... No ice.

LAUREN GILGER: But it has been the dam has been a source of jobs to those folks over the years, to the to the tribes up there. Is that a kind of a dying industry as well? I mean, when these lakes continue to dry, there’s not enough snow, what does that do not just to, you know, the economy in that area, but to the farmers who that water is supposed to be for?

RON DUNGAN: I don’t think those farmers are going to be able to get water from too many other places. You know, we’ve seen other farmers in Central Arizona struggle because of Colorado River problems, shortages there.

I think with fishing, you know, there’s always a chance that lakes will come back, you can restock them, that sort of thing. It’s problematic maybe when you get into endangered species, but for recreational fishing, I think over the long term, we’ll probably be fine.

The thing about fly fishing is you have to be an optimist to do it, so it’s it’s been a strange season, but we still have water and people are catching fish. Now we’re getting reports of an El Niño system moving in, and that could really help.

You know, in the news business, you’re supposed to point out when things aren’t going well. I think people misunderstand why we do that. It’s not to make people feel bad, it’s to give them a heads up while there’s still time to do something. We have time to do something about climate change, and ... we’ve done a lot of really good work in renewable energy, water conservation, and so forth, and I think we’ll get there. I certainly hope we do.

But when you see a lake with a bunch of fish going belly up, it’s a reminder we still have a long way to go.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. I mean, it’s such a harbinger, right, like of the times. And it seems so surreal, and I was watching video footage of it, it looks like something out of a a horror film or a sci-fi movie, right? Like, I just wonder what does this fish kill in particular at this lake in this time kind of say to you about the future of our environment?

RON DUNGAN: It’s a very jarring visual. If we have an El Niño and the lake fills back up, we can restock those fish. It’s very dystopian, and if you do environmental reporting or writing, you have a lot of dystopian moments. You have to be careful not to just make sure that all that reporting doesn’t come back to the public. There’s still a lot we can do.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, still a lot we can do. All right, we’ll end on a note of hope. Ron Dungan, a longtime Arizona environmental reporter, including here at KJZZ. He writes about this stuff on his Substack, and is the author of the book, "The Worst Fishing Dog Ever and Other Essays," all about fishing in these lakes. Ron, thank you so much for coming on The Show again. I appreciate it very much.

RON DUNGAN: Appreciated. Thanks for having me.