Ammonia spikes near Athens hit a watershed with no slack left

The Ron Campbell Apartments wastewater discharger near Athens has blown past its legal ammonia limit twice in the past year: 1,097% over permit at the end of December 2025, then 390% over again at the end of March 2026. That puts the facility in significant non-compliance with its Clean Water Act permit, one of only two dischargers in the watershed currently flagged that way, alongside JBH Investments LLC.

Ammonia at those concentrations is directly toxic to fish and invertebrates, and it also fuels bacterial growth that strips dissolved oxygen from the water as it breaks down, the same low-oxygen stress that bites hardest during warm, slow-moving late-summer flow. That timing matters here because the surrounding watershed has little capacity to absorb it: of 23 assessed waterways within ten miles, all 23 are already listed as impaired, and 20 of them, including both Hocking River segments near Athens, require a formal cleanup plan before conditions can improve.

Whether that ammonia reached the giant mayflies that emerged from the river a few weeks ago, alongside the Mahogany Duns, Ameletus, and Nixe mayflies that share these waters, is not something anyone can currently confirm. The Hocking River at Athens OH gage tracks streamflow and gage height only; it records nothing about dissolved oxygen, pH, or nutrient levels. So while the ammonia violations are documented in black and white, how far downstream that pollution traveled, or how long it lingered in the Western Allegheny Plateau's streams, is simply not being measured.