Residents say a new problem is surfacing on buckeye lake.
Some have spent their weekend cleaning up hundreds of dead fish found near their homes.
Roger Morgan says the water level where he lives was lowered Friday afternoon.
On a typical day you'll find Roger Morgan porch sitting, listening to the chimes and taking in the afternoon, but this weekend was anything but typical.
"We picked up 75 dead fish last night," he said.
75 dead fish surfaced Saturday.
"You could just pick up handfuls of them," he said.
Then Sunday, the problem returned.
"Very disappointing," he said. "I thought I was done picking up dead fish for a while."
He says normally this time of year the water is low.
"Once in a while you'll see a fish or two, but nothing like this," Morgan said. "There's hundreds of fish down there you can see."
Tonya Randazzio can't believe what she's seeing.
"sadness, very sad," she said. "Look at our fish, look at our lake. What is Buckeye Lake going to become when this is all gone?"
Mogan says the culprit is the spillway. He believes once the water stopped, there's now not enough oxygen in the water to keep the fish alive. Now the question becomes what about the fish that are still living? There are a handful of pools up and down the watershed where he lives with schools of fish still in them with no place to go.
"There must be 60 or 70 in each school," Morgan said. "There's hundreds of fish down here."
Matthew Eiselstein with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources says, concerning the dead fish, "Naturally occurring fish kills do occur throughout the state. Each year along the route 79 spillway, as the Amil gate closes, occurrences of dead fish are not uncommon. ODNR takes any report of a fish kill seriously and investigates instances that do not appear natural."
For Randazzio, simply saying these things happen isn't good enough and she is demanding action.
"Save our fish, save our lake," she said.
For Morgan, he and his wife will continue their cleanup.
"It isn't my job or her job," Morgan said. "But, if we don't do it, we're the ones that have to deal with it."
