Meridian has High PCB Levels

Lake Meridian was reported as having high levels of PCBs in a report by the Department of Ecology titled Washington State Toxics Monitoring Program: Contaminants in Fish Tissue from Freshwater Environments in 2006 which was published in February of 2008 and can be viewed at http://www.ecy.wa.gov/biblio/0803002.html.

The manufacture of Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCB's) was outlawed in the United States by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1977 following evidence that PCBs cause cancer and other harmful health effects. Since the banning, new evidence suggests PCBs also disrupt the endocrine system and lower intelligence levels of children exposed in the womb. Nursing infants are also at risk. During lactation, maternal fat stores provide about 60 percent of the fat that goes into breast milk, whereas 30 percent comes from mother's diet and ten percent is newly synthesized in the breast. By virtue of their ability to lactate therefore, mammalian females are
able to excrete the toxins that have accumulated in their body fat. PCBs are introduced into mother’s milk in this way.

This leaves us with two questions “Where are they coming from?” and “How do we clean them up?”. Some have speculated that increased development in the area has stirred up old soils and that the PCBs have remained in those soils and are now, through run off through yards and from the holding ponds, flowing into Lake Meridian. Others have suggested that pesticides used on lakeside yards are the culprit. These would have to be illegal pesticides created before the 1977 ban. Some say the PCBs have always been in the lake.

The shoreline master program which is being revised this year by the City of Kent can state the cleanup of the Lake as a goal but this is not law. The City will, however, be looking at ways to improve the water quality in the lake. The lower zoning approved last year may have been the first step in achieving healthier water in Lake Meridian.