Tests find PCBs in excrement of Montana hatchery trout

LEWISTOWN, Mont. – Tests of excrement from fish at the state hatchery here revealed PCB contamination, even though the hatchery underwent a roughly $1 million cleanup to remove paint laced with the suspected carcinogen.

Recent PCB tests on trout from the hatchery, which produces fish to stock in Montana waters, were negative.

Don Skaar of the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks said he is dumbfounded by the excrement results.

The agency owns the Big Springs Trout Hatchery and destroyed about 1 million hatchery fish in 2004 after tests revealed PCBs in rainbow trout. The fish disposal was followed by the cleanup project that included removing contaminated paint from raceways, the troughs where fish are reared.

Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials have wondered if the excrement – more than 10,000 pounds of it are in a holding pond – must be taken to an out-of-state landfill for hazardous waste.

But test results released Friday indicate the PCB levels do not rise to that threshold. Dumping the excrement in a landfill north of Great Falls may be an option. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has not made a final decision about disposal.

PCBs, polychlorinated biphenyls, are a mixture of synthetic and organic chemicals and were used in a variety of products before a congressional ban in 1977. Most Americans have detectable levels of PCBs in their blood, according to the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry in Atlanta.

In 1997, a school science experiment by a 10-year-old boy, Isaac Opper, revealed PCB problems in Big Spring Creek. Subsequent testing included the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, and in 2004 the PCB trail led upstream to the fish hatchery.

The toxins were from paint spread on the raceways 30 to 40 years earlier. Over the decades, paint flakes had contaminated Big Spring Creek for miles downstream. Much of the paint was released when hatchery workers spray-washed the raceways to remove algae during routine maintenance, and when the raceways were stripped for repainting.

Skaar said the most likely source of PCBs in the excrement is what he described as “ultra-low” levels of the toxin in the hatchery’s water supply.

Big Springs Trout Hatchery consists of an upper hatchery, where fish eggs are hatched, and a lower facility downstream, where the fry are reared to a size suitable for planting in lakes and streams. The cleanup project focused on the painted raceways at the lower hatchery.

At some point, paint flakes from the upper hatchery washed downstream, contaminating the sediment around the water intake for the lower hatchery. Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials suspect the sediment is the source of the PCBs in the lower hatchery water.

Removing the contamination may become part of the general creek cleanup, said Skaar, adding he “just can’t imagine that there’s some unknown source of PCBs that we haven’t tapped into.”