Thread: Eunice city lake

Hi Mateo, the story I heard on Eunice Lake is that is has some nice fish in it. The lake was created when a train wrecked on the backside of the lake causing a chemical spill. The lake was dug to remove the chemical from the ground. So the lake was a spill site that was cleaned up. I hear that some people are leery about eating the fish from there. I'm sure there is somewhere to check on the water quality of the lake if indeed it was once a spill site because it still should be monitored.
"gene"

Reviving Eunice City Lake | Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries

I did a little more digging into the accident. It seems that the wreck, as the first sentence says, didn't directly put anything dangerous directly into the lake as the lake isn't directly connected to the wreck site but that some chemicals could have been blown into the lake by the explosion.

Quote from
Health Consultation REVIEW OF 2002 EUNICE CITY LAKE FISH INVESTIGATION EUNICE, LOUISIANA JULY 27, 2005 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES Public Health Service Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry Division of Health Assessment and Consultation Atlanta, Georgia 30333

Quote: The accident site does not drain directly into the lake, but contamination of the lake could potentially have occurred through transport by the force of the explosions, by aerosols, or in smoke blowing from the site. As a result, Eunice City Lake was closed to recreational activities, including fishing, until environmental and fish samples could be evaluated. Directed by the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ), Union Pacific removed contaminated soil, burned trees, and contaminated water from the site for suitable disposal [2]. LDEQ and Union Pacific consultants also performed investigations to determine whether fish tissue or environmental samples from Eunice City Lake were contaminated during the train derailment. Based on results from the sample analyses, no public health advisory was considered necessary for the lake, and the lake was reopened to recreational activities in 1 Figure 1. Location of Union Pacific Derailment outside Eunice, Louisiana iEunice C ty Lake Adapted from: National Transportation Safety Board. Derailment of Union Pacific Railroad Train QFPLI-26 at Eunice, Louisiana, May 27, 2000. Railroad Accident Report: NTSB/RAR-02/03. Washington, DC: National Transportation Safety Board; 2003 April. November 2001. A recommendation was made that an additional round of sampling be performed in the future to ensure that bioaccumulation of contaminants did not occur in Eunice City Lake’s fish population [3]. The recommended sampling was performed in May 2002 by ARCADIS G & M, Inc. [1]. The community has recently expressed continuing concern about the water quality in the lake. SEET has therefore reviewed the ARCADIS data to determine whether consuming fish caught in Eunice City Lake would pose any human health risks.


Conclusions There are no health risks involved in eating fish caught in Eunice City Lake. Spotted gar tissues from the lake show increases in PCB content, and a slight increase in cancer risk has been estimated for residents eating one 6-8 ounce meal per week of spotted gar from the lake. However, since spotted gar are not commonly fished for at the lake, gar consumption at this rate from this source is unlikely. There is no public health hazard associated with consuming fish caught in Eunice City Lake.

Here is a link to the whole report.
https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/HAC/pha/Eu...tyLakeFish.pdf

"gene"

Eunice city lake was there way before the train wreck......when the train wreck happened, they drained the lake and then cleaned up the mess as mentioned........lake was not created due to the wreck.......used to bank fish there when i was a teenager and caught a few bass but that was it......heck, dont think i knew what a sac-a-lait was at that time....