Document wgZqjRRDmZ10M99aYd28pr3Y3

r . CLl|r I i, Dll Ul.tMl InwiniTHIS iUrt. ./j Sr.P i 2 *i375 GEORGIA S WATERS ARE RUNNING SCARED PCB Blues--'You Never Get Rid of' Em' The*fo$^5g#t^ "Well, we're not experts In PCBs," J. Leonard Ledbetter said Friday, the Coon River in Home were merely "but PCB* are toxic and cumulative." advisory- They "recommended" (het people not eat Hah taken from the Ledbetter, who is director of DNR's Environmental Protection Division, stream. explained that the very aualltles- That was on Sept. I, following a stabiUty, beat resistance and nonflam- finding by tbe Department of Natural mabtllty-Uiat make PCBs a useful Resource! (DNR) that samples of fish industrial chemical make them highly from the Coosa contained "very high persistent In the environment. counts" of polychlorinated biphenyls, better known ai PCBs. ) Six days later. Bob Gaw. the Floyd County conservation ranger who had posted the first signs, was putting up new ones. In big letters, the new signs said, "THIS RIVER IS CLOSED." . Smaller letters clariftetf that the closing applied to commercial fishing. They are easily absorbed into ani mal tissue and are not excreted, he added, and they find their way into man primarily through the food chain. "They are not Indestructible, but they are nondegradaMe," he said. "They accumulate In your system. You never get rid of thorn." . s But the message was loud and clear to fishermen of all kinds. "Usually, there are about 10 fisher men at the lock and dam at any time The known source of PCB pollution r of the Coosa, Ledbetter said, is a JfltigMfifcfc plant-that uses PCBs in making power transformers. of day," Oaw said. "Today there were none/1 There were other signs that the The PCBs got from the plant into the river "through poor housekeeping practices and carelessness" at the situation had grown more serious. A ` plant, Ledbetter said. DNR news release mi Sept. S said fish In other bodies of water "In this part, of the state and elsewhere'' were being sampled to determine Whether Through such practices ahd care- iflnnets "over a 20-year period, they tttorfied their property, Ledbetter salt!, Sdlnrftl(GE is. making efforts and to what extent BCRa might be found. - to curb tbe pollution. They have paved some saturated area* and built a shed Five days later, another DNR news over another *rea to stop rain from release said that "every major stream leaching PCBs into the river. and Impoundment in Georgia" was "We expect them to eliminate it en being monitored for FCBa. And in its action closing the Coosa, tirely," be said. Asked why the plant had been al the Board of Natural Resources, in a lowed to leak PCBs Into the river (or special meeting on Sept. 7, said the 20 years, Ledbetter laid that for many high level of PCBs In fish taken from years PCBs were not considered a the Coosa and (he poasiWUty of hfA* , problem. * levels in fish from other waters In the,' "We didn't even knoj It was going Cooes system "constitute an enpp .' intO the mironment," h said. "Am gency and an Imminent peril to the public health, safety and welfare." What is there about PCBs that causes such concern and precipitated we didn't know how to measure it." A spokesman for General Electric in Rome disputed portions of Ledbet-. tor's assessment and echoed others. such drastic action? "One cannot deny that over the years, from 1004 to 1900, when no . body kneW there was anything al legedly bad about PCBs, that we were perhaps not taking as much precau tion as we are today," Mid W. jft. "Bill" Buchanan, a manager for fte GE transformer department in Rome Buchanan Mid the um of PCBs had beetr confined in previous yean to ` .earthen dike* subject' to leakage be- cayse his company wai not aware of the dangers. Concrete dikes are used ' now, he Mid. He added, however, that he was "a little Incensed" that Ledbetter had tagged GE with "poor housekeeping and carelessness." "Any PCBs that our company here has been responsible for have been , through tbe leaching process," Bu chanan Mid. "But the way they put it. It sounds as (bough we'd been running a pipeline with PCBs directly to the river, which simply Isn't so." Buchanan Mid GE has spent $1.25 million In tbe past two years to clear up the pollution problem. Ledbetter said that 20 years ago, PCBs, which are chlorinated aromatic organic compounds made from a pe troleum base, were used much more widely in industry. , Today, PCBs are supplied only to "closed*' applications In tho electrical power industry, such as transformers and capacitors. "Because of contamination of the environment, the^fmf fkrp . which ii the sola U.S. manufacturer of PCBs, voluntarily restricted the Mle of PCBs," Ledbetter Mid. He produced a report by the US. .Environmental Protection Agendy. however, that Mid domestic produc tion of PCBs still amounted to about 40 million pounds per year as of 1074. As recently as 1072, the report added, only Knotted Information on the toxicity of PCBs was available. And it HONS 036799 was not until July 1973 that the federal Food and Drag Administration established limits on the amounts of PCBs that may be lawfully present in food. Tho danger level for PCBs in fish was set at five parts per million. "We found 127 parts per million in fish taken at Mayo's Bar, downstream of Rome said J O'. Johnston, chief of DNR's Information Section. "We got these test results tut, (Wednesday (Sept. D," said Ledbetter. "We notified Alabama about Lake. Weiss the next day." What about laboratory results on fish from other Georgia waters? "We don't think there are PCBs at * the dancer level in any ether water system In (be state," Ledbetter said. "But we're Just getting under way with our statewide survey/' The survey began last week, Led better Mid Friday, and so far only the test results from Clark Kill (near Augusta) had come in. They showed fess than one-half part of PCBs per million. - The tests, being conducted at the Atlanta*pNR lab and pt the Univer sity of ueorgia/are '"Very time-con suming/' Ledbetter said. "We're trying to expedite the teats, because we know that the people want to know Uie results," he sold. Earlier teeta of Lake Hartwell fish, prompted by a finding of PCB con tamination in a South Carolina section of the lake, found that fjsh In the Georgia waters were Mfe to eat. "We have taken umplet from the Tugdoo Rfyer pod the Georgia p*(iop of thbMake aivrknvt found rib flak with a level of PCBs' higher than thdt recommended as safe by federal guidelines," Johnston Mid. Fishing at the Coom, on the other hand, wu down only in certain areas Friday, perhaps because tbe ban bad wide circulation. At the Bait Shop, owned by Way- mon Storey, a uleswoman reported oo HI effect oil the store's business. "We're still seUing 'em," she Mid, And at tbe Tuggle Bait Farm, Lee Tuttle Mid, "You can't tell until the weekend. It (tbe ben) has had some . effect, I suppose, but we had *tir bush rsm test weekend. It'talrijm normal, Bo? at EubririW Cowfy Stdre, a seller of fishermen's supplies, Mrs. Frances Eubanks Mid, "Fish were dying in Armurchee Creek, below tbe old bridge, week before last, from a chemical pollution--not PCBs--from another plant. Both (pollution inci dents) together are reelly hurting business/' Apparently the effect on the fishing supply busineM depends upon whit part of the river the business pri marily serves, ' Gaw reported that one supplier at the lock and dam Mid his business had "dropped down to nothing." "Sport fishing had dropped a good bit," Gaw Mid. 7lSome are still fishing, but they My It's for mounting, not eat ing." Gaw Mid the ban's hardest blow was dealt to the five or 10 commer cial fishermen who depend on the fish for their sole source of income. "Then there are about SO to SO who fish commercially to supplement their incoknef," Gaw mM. Lawrence E. McSwaln, DNR's as sistant chief of fisheries, uld, "Basi cally, Georgia has a very minor amount of commercial fishing Inland, and that*! mostly catfish. Very few people in Georgia earn their living from commercial fishing, particularly Intend." Asked if there were other ramifica tions of poisoned waters in Georgia. Ledbetter said, "We're not aware of other ramification!. Our main concern Is the pathway to man-the air he. breathes, the water he drinks, the food he eats. If there are PCBs in any of our water systems, we simply want to find it, or any other such substance, .and get them out." . * 'r Re Mid that the danger level for k PCBs in drinking water ia much lower y then in Hsh-'only one part per bil lion." /'We had a similar problem with mercury poisoning in 1MB-70 at the-. Olln plant in Augusta and at Allied j Chemical in Brunswick," he said, i "They mM we couldn't eliminate that, \ but we did." ' HON* 036800