Gandie suspects what led his father to take him there as a kid is the warm water coming from the aluminum refinery and the plastics producer built nearby years later. The warm water draws fish in whenever there's a cold front.
"But I think it was also just word of mouth. People tell their friends that they caught some fish, and they're like, 'Oh yeah, where?' and more and more people show up," Gandie, of nearby
But extreme health risks lie beneath the surface.
Tons of mercury into the bay
According to court records,
No court record shows how much mercury
Inorganic mercury is used in industrial processes and can become organic mercury, or methylmercury, when combined with carbon. Methylmercury accumulates in the food chain. According to the
In the early 1990s, Morales joined a chorus of other officials calling on
The cleanup
Before
Around this time,
"Last year, additional dredging work removed impacted sediment within a targeted area, which includes Witco's channel and harbor. Also, specific marsh grasses were removed and that work will continue this year. These actions are expected to further lower mercury concentrations within the closed area," Beck said.
But marine biologists who reviewed the
The marine biologists said waves could bury the contaminated sediment, but storms, such as Hurricane Harvey, could bring it up again.
Experts wouldn't eat the fish
The marine biologists said they were "disturbed but not surprised" that the average mercury concentration in red drum remained high in the 2016
They were not surprised by the high levels partly because red drum are high on the food chain and so absorb all the mercury eaten by the smaller fish and crabs that they eat. Humans are at the top of the food chain, so the mercury levels would be even higher.
"Oftentimes, when we stop the discharge of mercury, we see an initial dramatic decline of mercury in the fish, and this is followed by a slower, second phase where the rate of the decline in the mercury in fish lessens or levels off, and that's what's going on here. It shouldn't be a surprise," he said.
"It's like the issue of gun violence. Everybody is talking past each other right now, and one of the reasons for that is
Doctors say eating fish with a high concentration of mercury one time probably won't land a diner in the hospital.
But they also say eating it over weeks, months and years or in large quantities will cause subtle but serious reproductive and neurological changes. The neurological changes include diminished vision, hearing and cognitive ability. They say this can happen to anyone -- not just women and children, who remain the most susceptible to mercury poisoning.
"And these changes are not dissimilar from other diseases, so it's not easy to recognize them unless you're specifically testing people for mercury," said
"It's very difficult, I think, to discourage people from consuming fish that they've caught, but I can tell you that the
Sagging Superfund support
The Superfund act doesn't have the same level of bipartisan support in
The GAO found during that same time period, while the total number of Superfund sites remained constant, the number of those making progress decreased by 37 percent.
And most recently, the
In March,
Trump put in charge of the
"Because of what Pruitt is doing at the
Unconcerned about
"To me, fish have fins for a reason," said
"I still get an occasional question about that area," Miller said, "and I just explain it to them kind of like I did to you, that it's more of a precautionary deal, that you'd have to eat a huge amount of fish for it to become a problem."
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