Waukegan Harbor Fish Unsafe to Eat, State Warns

By Madhu Krishnamurthy Daily Herald Staff Writer

A state warning that two species of fish in Waukegan Harbor are unsafe to eat has turned the spotlight on a long-standing effort to clean up the waterfront’s contaminants.

The Illinois Department of Public Health Thursday cautioned anglers to not eat more than a meal a month of white suckers and sunfish caught in the harbor due to high levels of polychlorinated biphenyls.

More than 200 manmade chemicals that were used at one time as insulating fluid for electrical equipment, such as capacitors and transformers, are classified as PCBs.

The Waukegan Harbor contaminants were from a nearby Superfund site. The harbor was dredged in 1994 to reduce the PCB level in the sediment to 50 parts per million, considered the standard at the time. Today’s safe level is less than 1 part per million.

The state has not issued a fish consumption advisory for the harbor since 1997. Advocates pushing for its dredging to get rid of these pollutants are not surprised by the news.

“It doesn’t surprise me because there is still residual contaminants in the harbor that need to be removed,” said Susie Schreiber, chairwoman of the Waukegan Harbor Citizens’ Advisory Group leading the local clean-up effort. “You hope that it doesn’t happen, but you suspect that it probably will.”

Experts say one reason for the recurrence may be contaminants still in the sediment are being consumed by creatures known as macro invertebrates. They are the food source of the white sucker and sunfish.

The more these fish feed on macro invertebrates, the higher their contamination level, said Ken Runkle, the state’s environmental toxicologist.

“(Yet) there is no way of knowing from the sampling what the source is,” he added. “PCBs are an environmentally persistent compound chemical. They have not been manufactured in the United States for decades, but they do not break down well in the environment.”

PCBs accumulate in the fat of animals so they are carried upward through the food chain.

State officials say there is no immediate health threat from eating PCB-contaminated fish, but there could be long-term detrimental effects, especially for women of child-bearing age and children.

Schreiber says her group will educate residents who do rely on the harbor as a food source.

“We’re very concerned about the angling community,” she said.

“There’s a lot of Hispanics that do sustenance fishing. But it’s not just Hispanics. People are just catching fish for fun and then they go home and eat them. It’s a pleasurable thing to do on a warm afternoon.”

State officials say it is time to refocus efforts on dredging the harbor to eliminate this threat.

“This (advisory) underscores why we need to move to the final cleanup of the harbor,” said U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk, a Republican from Highland Park,. “I am calling for a harbor cleanup summit in April.”

Kirk secured $3.5 million in U.S. Army Corps of Engineers funding for the dredging. But that’s a drop in the bucket of the total cleanup cost.

It is estimated to run anywhere from $35 million up to about $75 million, said Tammy Mitchell, community relations coordinator for the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency.

The cost would have to be shared by all levels of government agencies and industry groups.

GRAPHIC: Beware of certain fish

The Illinois Department of Public Health issued a warning Thursday about eating certain fish from 22 locations due to contaminants. Twelve lakes, rivers and creeks were added to the list including:

– Waukegan Harbor (Lake County) -limit consumption of all sizes of white sucker and sunfish to one meal per month.

– Nippersink Creek (McHenry County) -limit consumption of all sizes of channel catfish to one meal per week.

– East branch of the DuPage River – limit consumption of all sizes of carp to one meal per week.

What are PCBs?

– Polychlorinated biphenyls are oily liquid or solid manmade chemicals, clear to yellow in color with no smell or taste.

– They are released into the environment through spills, leaks from electrical and other equipment, and improper disposal and storage.

– They bind tightly to sediments contaminating water bodies.

– They can cause short-term changes in the activity of the liver without any noticeable symptoms. PCBs can affect the immune, endocrine and reproductive systems of animals. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has classified them as probably human carcinogens.

Illinois Department of Public Health