HARRIMAN, Tenn. (WVLT) -- Last week's ash slide at TVA's Kingston plant could have long term implications with the area's ecosystem.

This is a situation wildlife biologists with the Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency have never seen before.

They say the good news is, it looks like the water quality is good.

But they also say they won't know the long term impact on the fish population without tissue sampling which will happen very soon.

"I've been fishing all my life. Me and my daughters after they were big enough to go, they went fishing too and they still do," says Della Wallace who has fished the area near the plant for sixty years.

For Della Wallace's family, including her two older brothers, fishing has been a part of their lives for more than six decades, that is until last week's ash slide.

"It's like my life that I knowed it was gone," says Wallace.

So what effect did the ash slide have on the areas aquatic life? A TWRA wildlife biologist says the levee break certainly affected the habitat of some birds and fish.

TWRA aquatic habitat biologist Bobby Brown says, "From our initial response we're only seeing primarily dead fish from the initial phase."

Brown says the good news is it appears there's nothing toxic to cause any immediate problems with the aquatic life still living in the area.

"Downstream and upstream we're not finding any dead fish and water quality reports are saying that it's suitable," says Brown.

But it's down the road they're now looking toward, which is a big unknown. Brown says they'll have to do fish tissue sampling to test and see if any metals from the fly ash are detected in the fish.

"Once we start conducting our sampling of everything then we can kind of get a better analysis of that," says Brown.

Meanwhile, Della Wallace isn't taking any chances and doesn't plan on eating any fish from the water near her home.

"Well, until they find out what's in there, you know the chemical things, I don't think it would be safe," says Wallace.

Brown says they plan to begin doing tissue sampling of fish either late this week or early next to determine if the fish have absorbed any metal contamination.

But for now, federal EPA officials have placed no additional bans on eating fish from the waterways near the plant other than the ones in place prior to the ash slide.