Spokane River Fish Contain Heavy Metals

Fish caught by scientists in the upper Spokane River last year contain some of the highest levels of heavy metals ever measured in the state’s rivers, new laboratory results show.

“The only other place that has cadmium, lead and zinc levels this high is in the upper Columbia, due to Cominco’s pollution,” said Art Johnson, an environmental specialist at the state laboratory in Olympia that tested the Spokane River fish.

Bottom-feeding suckers were up to 40 times more contaminated with lead than wild rainbow trout in the upper river, the data show.

But in many whole-body samples, both species showed elevated levels of lead compared with national averages.

Crayfish and caddis flies, food sources for the fish, also showed elevated lead levels.

The fish were taken from the Spokane River last July, August and October in a joint Washington Department of Ecology-U.S. Geological Survey expedition.

The work is part of a larger effort to determine the downstream damage to Washington resources from Idaho’s historic mining pollution and to determine the Spokane River’s overall health.

This week, the officials who directed the fish study said they haven’t determined the health risks to the public of eating metals-contaminated fish.

Discussions with state and local health officials will begin within the next couple of days, said John Roland of Ecology’s regional office in Spokane.

Spokane County health officials said Tuesday they hadn’t seen the fish data yet.

But recent revelations of elevated lead and arsenic in shoreline sediments along the upper Spokane warrant further public warnings on signs along the river, said Michael LaScuola, the district’s risk specialist.

“It’ll be one heck of a sign, with the sediments and now the fish,” LaScuola said.

Ecology recently sent the fish data on to the EPA “without the benefit of interpretation,” according to a Feb. 16 Ecology memo.

That’s because EPA is working on a tight deadline to examine the Spokane River’s ecological health for its Superfund work, Roland said.

“We wanted their ecological risk assessment to have the benefit of this information, so we fast-tracked it,” he said.

The EPA is expected to decide this spring how much more mining-related heavy metals cleanup should be done in the Coeur d’Alene Basin outside the 21-square-mile Superfund site at Kellogg.

The Spokane River fish study is the second pollution study with bad news for Spokane residents.

In fall 1998 and February 1999, another USGS team found heavily contaminated sediments in the same stretch of the upper Spokane.

The results surprised the EPA, which extended its risk assessment to the beaches along that stretch of the river.

Last July, Spokane’s regional health district posted a health advisory at trail heads along the river warning that exposure to lead, cadmium and zinc is a health hazard for infants and children.

This month’s fish results may give additional momentum to a push to extend the EPA’s Superfund study far downstream into Washington.

The fish study results will be discussed Thursday at a meeting of the Washington Citizens Advisory Commission on mining pollution in the Spokane-Coeur d’Alene watershed.

The meeting is at 7 p.m. at Ecology’s regional office at 4601 North Monroe.