To many, Choccolocco Creek seems a poster child for secrecy and neglect in Alabama.
It's not that Choccolocco's present condition is unlike the toxic legacy of hundreds of other contaminated watersheds in the world. It is one of more than 600 water bodies in the United States alone with fish consumption bans based on the lingering presence of polychlorinated biphenyls.
What makes Choccolocco stand out is that the global accumulation of PCBs began here. It was a drain for the world's first PCB manufacturing plant.
Theodore Swann, an Alabama industrialist who revolutionized chemical manufacturing, successfully challenged his Anniston chemists to create the fire-resistant fluids in 1929. By the time Monsanto Co. purchased Swann's Anniston plant in 1935, it is quite possible that PCBs had been finding their way into the environment for several years.
In the 1930s, industrial PCB mixtures were blamed for causing toxic reactions in workers who inhaled or handled the fluids. But it wasn't until 1968, after a mass poisoning incident in Japan, that scientists realized PCBs might pose a risk to the entire population.
A year later, scientists proved the global spread of these substances and the severe effects they had on the reproductive and enzyme functions in fish and wildlife. But more than three decades later, they remain confounded by what constitutes "safe" levels of PCBs in humans.
This article will shed light on behind-the-scenes events concerning chemical pollution in Choccolocco. It also will attempt to explain the critical nature of ongoing investigations.
For the Choccolocco watershed, federally mandated ecological and human health assessments are just beginning. These technical studies are being planned and executed by contractors for Solutia, Inc., Monsanto's chemical spin-off company.
Few have challenged Solutia's investigation other than local attorney Donald Stewart, who has filed a request with Circuit Judge Joel Laird to order the company to pay for PCB dredging in the creek.
Federal authorities warn that chemical contamination in the creek remains a substantial threat to fish and wildlife. Even low concentrations of PCBs and mercury, which persist in river and stream sediments, can injure aquatic organisms, says Peter Tuttle, a Daphne-based contamination specialist for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
The Environmental Protection Agency considers PCBs in the environment to be more toxic and more persistent than the original mixtures. The chemical threat magnifies up the food chain to wild birds and mammals, apparently none of which have been tested locally for PCBs, Tuttle said.
A series of recent trips to Choccolocco indicate that the creek is now teeming with life, as compared to its sewer-like status in the 1960s and 1970s. But it is not clear to what extent the PCBs continue to harm the creek dwellers.
So, the consensus among regulators and other experts is not surprising. They claim that more detailed investigation in Choccolocco will occur to determine how to erase the threat of pollution.
The early days
The recorded history of pollution in Choccolocco begins with a massive fish kill.
The day was March 20, 1966.
At approximately 2:30 p.m., Eastaboga fisheries biologist Bill Parker received an unsettling telephone call from his colleague in Talladega, Chester Gardner.
The two biologists, employed by the Alabama Department of Conservation, met 30 minutes later at the Alabama Highway 77 bridge over Choccolocco Creek. As they peered over the bridge, the first thing they noticed was a small eddy pool containing small fish flopping in distress.
That Sunday afternoon was the launching date of the first known investigation of industrial pollution in 70-mile Choccolocco. During a period of eight days, state conservation biologists and the Alabama Water Improvement Commission reported the dramatic death of 56,200 fish and an undocumented number of dead and sick turtles, insects and crawfish. An estimated 23 miles of stream, reaching to the Coosa River, was affected. Reportedly, cows and dogs also were killed.
It remains perhaps the largest man-caused fish and wildlife kill in the recorded history of the creek. Moreover, it resulted in plenty of negative publicity for Monsanto Co. and the Anniston Water Works and Sewer Board, who both were blamed for illegally discharging parathion, a powerful pesticide now banned by the U.S. government.
Yet the parathion incident snowballed into a more massive investigation of chemical releases into Choccolocco. State prosecutors accused Monsanto of causing death in Choccolocco. That led Monsanto to hire fish experts to determine the long-term effects of its chemicals. It didn't take long before concern about parathion poisoning was supplanted by concern about toxic effluent containing mercury and the discovery of large quantities of polychlorinated biphenyls in fish and sediment up and down the Choccolocco watershed.
The state pronounced the mercury levels in local fish "safe" in July 1970, based on the results of a federal study. But when the same study indicated Choccolocco catfish carried more than 50 times the then-acceptable level of PCBs, the state issued no health recommendations.
Monsanto made public assurances that it was handling the PCB problems. A year later, it ended PCB production in Anniston.
Meanwhile, the PCBs, and to a lesser extent, mercury and lead, persisted in the watershed. The polluted creek supplied fish for the dinner table, drinking water for cattle and irrigation for crop fields.
Chasing PCBs
Dr. Royal Suttkus can be considered an early expert on Choccolocco pollution.
To this day, hundreds of Choccolocco specimens, including deformed ones he collected in the early 1970s, are still sealed in jars at the Tulane University Collections in New Orleans.
Suttkus, a retired Tulane fish scientist, was hired by Monsanto in 1970 to investigate local fish. In a two-year period, he noted pollution coming from Monsanto, the National Gypsum Company, the Anniston Wastewater Treatment Plant and the Anniston Army Depot, all of which discharged to the creek. He also saw the damage to fish populations as the U.S. Department of Agriculture built a series of dams on the upper creek.
PCBs undoubtedly were linked to some devastating problems in the vicinity of Monsanto's outfalls. "It was a pretty sad situation," Suttkus said.
"I don't know when the goldfishes were introduced to the creek, but they were hurt bad. They were pop-eyed, mutilated, with deformities in the fins. Even when we put the net underneath them gently, blood would come out of their gills," he recalled during a recent interview.
"The bull frogs were a sick-looking lot. They were so reduced in strength and vigor, they'd lie limp in your hand," Suttkus said.
The fish Suttkus and his colleagues collected - mostly sunfish and darters - were shipped to Monsanto's laboratories in St. Louis for chemical analysis. Monsanto sent the chemical data back to Suttkus so he could interpret it, he said.
The fact that contaminated fish were discovered in upper tributaries, such as Shoal Creek, led Suttkus to suspect that PCB contamination was spreading by air currents, not just by water pollution.
Suttkus gave a series of recommendations to Monsanto in 1972. He suggested that Monsanto follow PCB levels in fish in Choccolocco, Shoal Creek, the Coosa River and tributaries "for some years to come in order to discover the details of the breakdown process with respect to time. The residual nature of PCBs complicates the environmental problem, as well as the very large quantity of PCBs that have been added to Choccolocco Creek in past years."
As late as 1979, Tulane University biologists collected fish in the Coosa River, immediately downstream of Monsanto, with PCB levels averaging 65 parts per million.
But the PCB problems surfacing on the Coosa had a second, major source - a General Electric transformer plant in Rome, Ga. The Rome plant was a valuable customer for Monsanto's PCB mixtures and had received Monsanto's first PCB shipment ever in 1935.
In 1976, both companies were accused in a $1 billion lawsuit for ruining the commercial fisheries in the upper Coosa River and Weiss Lake, but Monsanto was only accused of selling the chemical to GE. At the time, the damages sought by fishermen, property owners and the state of Alabama, were thought to be the largest ever in the history of Alabama.
The lawsuit was settled in 1979 for an undisclosed sum. The state received $68,000 of that total - a figure based on the estimated loss of state fishing license fees and the accrued cost of PCB monitoring in the river, according to Anniston Star records.
Fuzzy years
Reviewing the years of data collections, it is clear that state and federal officials never fully forgot about the PCBs lingering in the Coosa River.
What is a little more difficult to grasp is why the PCB investigation in Choccolocco fizzled out, why state and federal regulators ignored PCBs in the middle Coosa, and why the regulators focused the entire investigation of PCB pollution to the upstream portions impacted by GE's discharges.
An internal Monsanto memo from 1970 indicates early concern about the PCBs in Choccolocco fish. The company's environmental health officer, Jack Garrett, told an Anniston plant superintendent about a conversation he had with J.L. Crockett, the chief engineer for the Alabama Water Improvement Commission.
"Crockett told me that if this PCB issue hits the Alabama press, (AWIC) would be forced to close Choccolocco Creek and the Martin-Logan Reservoir to commercial and sport fishing unless we can prove that the contamination level does not reach the reservoir. The state of Alabama has no choice but to follow the guidelines of the FDA which calls for no more than 5 PPM PCB in fish."
Despite years of data to show otherwise, the Environmental Protection Agency in 1976 identified GE but not Monsanto as a source of PCBs entering the Coosa River. Fish advisories were instituted that year after Alabama and Georgia discovered elevated levels of PCBs in the Coosa fish.
But that shed no light on the local status of PCB contamination. After the Food & Drug Administration survey results for Choccolocco had been announced to the public in 1970 and 1971, the PCB issue quickly submerged.
Company records show that PCB investigations in Choccolocco continued at least until 1974, but the results were not publicized. Despite a 1979 Sport Fisheries Institute report identifying Monsanto as a source for PCBs in the Coosa, one would be hard pressed to find any other information about the matter.
But a whole new chain of events began in the middle 1980s.
It began when Danny LeCompte, a lab specialist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture based in Auburn, decided it was time to revisit the 1976 Coosa fish advisories.
"I thought it was time to do some testing," LeCompte said. "People had torn down all the 1970s fish advisory signs from the boat docks." In 1986, USDA inspectors gathered fish from Coosa fishermen. LeCompte's lab analysis showed elevated and detectable levels of PCBs from Weiss Lake all the way down to Lake Logan Martin.
The USDA quickly announced a commercial ban on selling Coosa River fish. The fallout began immediately. LeCompte was suddenly a target for angry fishermen. "The next day, I got a death threat over the telephone," he said in a recent interview.
At least to some individuals, LeCompte's results indicated a need for Alabama public health officials to revisit the old fish advisories.
On Oct. 21, 1986, Clarence White, the chief of fisheries for the Department of Conservation, wrote a letter expressing his dismay to the Alabama Department of Public Health. "There are significant questions that need answers," he wrote.
He asked the state health officer, Jim Cooper, if the PCB reports should be made publicly available without an "appropriate advisory" from the state Health Department or the USDA. He asked:
"Since any action by your department would not solve the problem, should we ask (ADEM) or the EPA to find and adequately eliminate the sources?"
He then asked, "Since the information has been released and is spreading by word of mouth, should a news release be written to inform the public about PCBs?"
It took three years for the state to follow up on the USDA's commercial ban with general consumption advisories. It took seven years for the state to identify Choccolocco as a source for PCB pollution.
PCBs rediscovered
In 1989, ADEM confirmed the high PCB levels and the state Health Department issued a fish advisory for the Coosa River.
Two years later, ADEM institutionalized a fish collection program for Alabama rivers and streams. ADEM made plans to sample Choccolocco fish in October 1993.
But ADEM was beat to the punch by a Soil Conservation Service contractor working on Choccolocco Creek in the summer of 1993.
The contractor, now deceased, pulled deformed fish out of the creek and sent them to an independent laboratory. The laboratory found high levels of PCBs, so the contractor forwarded his results to ADEM. The agency chose to sample the creek in August, several months ahead of schedule.
The resulting fish advisory of 1993 - as well as that year's discovery of a PCB-leaking Monsanto landfill - brought public attention to the problem for the first time in 22 years.
Because fish samples collected from Lake Logan Martin in 1995 showed significantly higher PCB levels in fish than the fish collected in 1989, Solutia, Inc. points to a Choccolocco dredging project that may have remobilized PCBs buried in creek sediment. There is no data from Choccolocco to demonstrate what the PCB fish levels were before the dredging project began.
State and local USDA defend the dredging, which had received support from both ADEM and Monsanto. "Our sediment samples showed low, low levels of PCBs," said Ken Aycock, of the USDA's National Soil Conservation Service.
But after 1993, dredging projects in Choccolocco were shelved. At least a half-dozen projects - from the Quintard Mall expansion to Alabama 21 bridge construction - have been initiated or influenced because of the PCB pollution.
State officials say they are at least several years away from establishing final remedies for the creek itself.
The good and the bad
Some local folk remain irritated that it took two decades for the state to notify residents of the risks posed by eating fish from Choccolocco Creek.
"They wouldn't have done anything if we hadn't said something," Bruce Hutchinson of Anniston said during a recent canoe ride on Choccolocco.
Since 1993, the lower half of the Choccolocco watershed has come under state, federal and legal scrutiny. In the latter case, one of the largest PCB pollution lawsuits in Anniston includes a request for court-ordered dredging in the creek.
State regulators never have estimated how many PCBs were released into Choccolocco Creek. Their reasoning is that evaluating historical data is a lot less important than measuring the current threat.
Even though the state is several years away from announcing plans for cleaning up Choccolocco, ADEM and Solutia already have gathered thousands of samples from the watershed.
The latest data shows the level of PCBs and mercury in Choccolocco and Lake Logan Martin fish is not nearly as high as it used to be.
The bad news is that at least one "hot spot" remains in the creek (as compared to 40 hot spots in the Hudson River). The highest sediment PCB levels in Choccolocco Creek occur just downstream of the confluence with Snow Creek in Oxford. The highest fish PCB levels have been recorded just upstream of the confluence.
Solutia points to a four-fold decline in Choccolocco fish PCB levels between 1996 and 2000. "We have no hard data to say why that is," said Craig Branchfield, Solutia's remediation manager. "But natural attenuation seems to make the most sense."
However, some national experts warn that natural attenuation, alone, will not resolve Choccolocco's PCB problems. "What we see now is stability in the fish levels," explained Ron Sloan, a New York Department of Natural Resources biologist who has tracked PCBs in the Hudson River since 1976. Federal officials recently announced portions of the Hudson River must be dredged for PCBs.
Sloan said, "We see changes occur when there is an event - like a removal or a sudden release of a lot of PCBs. In terms of declines, the greatest single event was when they shut off the discharge pipes 200 miles upstream of New York City. We saw a 10-fold decrease."
Solutia maintains that the amount of PCBs released from the surface sediment is less than what is being buried by the process of natural attenuation.
Changing laboratory methods and gathering techniques make it impossible to draw exact comparisons to PCB levels in fish or sediment from the 1970s to the present day, but a significant drop is evident.
For example, fish in the 1970s contained hundreds of parts per million PCBs. The highest recording of PCBs in the last decade was 38 PPM - still far above the healthy consumption limit. As yet, the state has not collected a single bass in Choccolocco exactly at or below the FDA safety threshold.
In the past, sediment concentrations as high as 740 PPM have been recorded in the watershed. On average, sediment testing in the 1990s has indicated that the average levels of PCBs in creek sediment do not exceed 1 PPM. But that doesn't really mean much.
"You've got to look at (the creek) in smaller bites," said Steven Cobb, ADEM's hazardous waste chief.
"The higher concentrations are in the area where Snow Creek joins Choccolocco. Which is exactly what you would anticipate," Cobb said. "You expect those PCB particles to settle out there."
Conclusions
Cobb said he anticipates that some areas of the creek will undergo more "aggressive" cleanup measures than others will.
He said he couldn't give an estimate on how many years it will take before those measures will be announced for public comment.
Stewart, the Anniston attorney representing several thousand plaintiffs suing the chemical company, said he will continue to fight for dredging.
"It needs to be done to protect the health and welfare of the people around there," he said. Referring to the $500 million dredging project in New York, he added, "Our people are entitled to the same level of protection as those at the Hudson River."
Solutia's remediation manager Craig Branchfield said he anticipates the company will spend two or three more years testing Choccolocco. "Then, there will be another period of time to come up with solutions."
After all this is done, residents finally will have the opportunity they were not given 30 years ago - they will be able to give their input on complicated decisions for creek's future.
Considering that the project encompasses 35 miles of creek and 6,000 acres of floodplain, "we cannot come up with a global solution for Choccolocco. We have to evaluate each section of creek separately," Branchfield said.
Tuttle, of U.S. Fish & Wildlife, said his agency soon will begin to take a more active role in evaluating the ecological threats of PCBs and mercury in the creek.
"Additional work is clearly needed to determine the extent and severity of contamination
to determine appropriate cleanup levels," Tuttle said.
He reiterated that the sampling so far appears to indicate that PCBs still exist at "harmful" levels.
