TMDL Studies

Bull Creek

Total dissolved solids (TDS) and sediment TMDLs were completed for  Bull Creek, located in Buchanan County, Virginia.  A draft report is currently available for download on the DEQ website.

A part of the Tennessee-Big Sandy River basin, the Bull Creek watershed comprises state hydrologic unit Q08 (National Watershed Boundary Dataset BS14), and is located west of Harman Junction and US Highway 460 in Buchanan County, Virginia, Figure 1. The watershed is 3,128.5 ha (7,731 acres) in size. The main land use in Bull Creek is forest, 81% of the total watershed area. The remainder includes 15% in mining-related land uses, 3% in urban/residential land uses, and 1% in agriculture. Bull Creek flows east and discharges into Levisa Fork, which flows northwesterly into Kentucky, where it enters the Big Sandy River. The Big Sandy River is a tributary of the Ohio River which flows into the Mississippi River and then to the Gulf of Mexico.


Figure 1: Location of the Bull Creek Watershed

Bull Creek and its tributaries −Left Fork Bull Creek (Convict Hollow), Belcher Branch, Deel Fork, and Cove Hollow− were originally listed as impaired on Virginia’s 1998 Section 303(d) TMDL Priority List and Report due to water quality violations of the general aquatic life (benthic) standard. As a result, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) added Bull Creek to the 1998 consent order requiring a TMDL by 2008.

The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (VADEQ) has delineated the benthic impairment as 16.84 miles on Bull Creek and its tributaries (stream segment VAS-Q08R_BLC01A98). The impaired stream segment begins in the headwaters and extends to the confluence of Bull Creek with Levisa Fork.