http://www.last.fm/music/Deep+Purple/_/Smoke+on+the+Water
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| Chlordane (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
WLIC is firing on all cylinders with its double barrel emails this week regarding the threats to the lake water. The results of testing two fish were not encouraging and the threat of the invading zebra mussel is real. What to do? No simple answers here and it doesn't paint a very pretty picture of water quality (or at least the impression of water quality).
I talked on the phone with Jim Miller in regards to the fish found to have "chemicals" My interest was to find out exactly what chemicals we are talking about. A 23" catfish and black bass were submitted for testing (last time fish were tested was 4 years ago according to Jim...I thought there had been testly more recently...nope) The object of concern was the catfish with trace amounts of DDT, PCB, CHLORDANE and TOXAPHENE. I believe these are all chemicals banned for use in the USA. Bottom line, for now, the advisory to eat no more than 8 ounces of catfish per person, per month. Especially susceptible are children and women of child bearing age (I guess old males are on the down hill side anyway).
There is a plan to test fish again in the spring, March/April, with three different samplings of 3 to 5 fish of the same size and different parts of the lake, stay tuned.
So how did the contaminants get into the lake? At this point nobody knows beyond conjecture. Chlordane was used quite frequently as an agent to combat termites here at the lake and other places. Could chemicals be transported from sources upstream? Did the dredge operation "stir up" chemicals that resided in the dredge material (I did ask Jim if any of the dredge material had been examined for chemicals, he said best of his knowledge, no).
Not pretty.
Tomorrow...Lake on Lockdown, The Threat of Zebras
3 comments:
I would prefer "Litigation Lake" versus "Contaminated Lake". We all pay a premium to live here, if the lake goes to hell we will pay the penalty in the form of property values going south, way south.
For what it is worth, I don't think the Board can suspend boat permits, I believe it has to be passed through rules and regs, which it has not. What they could do is change the locks and make users request access until this issue has been resolved. This would inconvenience very few people this month and next month.
urban terrorism, a bucket of water from Smithville
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