In 1983, state officials posted advisories against eating fish from the Capitol Lakes in Baton Rouge, citing chronic toxic pollution.

After decades of inaction, federal regulators in 2023 declared the lakes a "Superfund" contamination site requiring cleanup.

But negotiations over who is responsible and what should be done have yet to result in any work — two companies involved deny responsibility, with one claiming the fish are safe enough to consume despite ongoing state warnings to the contrary.

Now a Baton Rouge homeowner's group says the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency should step in and force the issue.

Members of the Historic Spanish Town Civic Association say it's time for the EPA to issue a "unilateral administrative order" to force work to begin on an area known since the early 1970s to be heavily polluted.

"Eight governors have resided along these shores while eight administrations have overseen this environmental disaster. The lakes sit beside our State Capitol, State Veterans Park, and the historic Spanish Town neighborhood," Gregg Bailey, the civic association's point person on the Superfund site, said in a statement. "This is not just historic — it’s a historic failure of environmental stewardship."

In 2022, an EPA assessment found PCB concentrations in fish were high and widespread enough to declare the fishery contaminated, with some samples just under the maximum safe level. The EPA also found pesticides and concerning levels of heavy metals — arsenic, chromium and mercury — in the fish.

Bailey claims no substantial remediation of the lakes has occurred despite decades of legislative resolutions and a 1980s commission led by then-Gov. Buddy Roemer that recommended cleanup.

"Our state may champion industry, but allowing pollution to endanger the seat of our government is more than ironic — it’s unacceptable," added Bailey, who worked on the cleanup of another Superfund site, PetroProcessors in North Baton Rouge, for nearly two decades.

A spokesman for the EPA, Joe Robledo, declined to comment on the Spanish Town association's demands.

"As EPA’s enforcement activities are ongoing for the Capitol Lakes site Superfund site, we are not able to share any enforcement-related information at this time," Robledo said.

A spokeswoman for the state Department of Health, which issues fish advisories in conjunction with the state Department of Environmental Quality, didn't return a request for comment.

No way out

Created from damming Grassie Bayou over a century ago, the 65-acre three-lake area and its live oak-lined shores create an iconic south Louisiana setting for the State Capitol.

But cut off from the Mississippi River — Grassie Bayou's historic end point — the manmade lakes don't naturally drain, relying instead on a pump to maintain water levels. With no natural outlet, sediments flowing into the lakes have settled on the bottom for decades.

That sediment was laced for years with contaminants from upstream industry and possibly vehicle yards, state and federal studies have repeatedly found.

The fish, particularly bottom feeders like smallmouth buffalo, have trace amounts of those toxic chemicals in their flesh that include the banned pesticide DDT, heavy metals and PCBs, studies show.

When the contamination drew attention in the 1980s, several companies with upstream properties reached settlements with state regulators to clean up their sites. Those agreements didn't include addressing pollutants in the lakes, however.

By 1998, DEQ's experts had conducted a new analysis that found contamination in parts of the lakes posed an unacceptable risk to people wading or swimming. Fish from all three lakes were deemed unsafe to eat.

Despite those findings, state environmental regulators decided in 2002 to take no further action on the lake sediment pollution and declined to pursue a Superfund listing, which includes federal funding and oversight.

Thirty years after the problems first came to light, the agency had decided to let nature lower contamination levels over time, what's known as "natural attenuation." The consumption advisory was kept in place to prevent people from being exposed to the contaminated fish.

Natural attenuation is not an uncommon practice in the often expensive cleanup of contamination. But in 2021, DEQ officials under then-Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards reversed that decision.

Saying the "attenuation" approach hadn't lowered contamination levels enough, DEQ transferred the site to the EPA's oversight for cleanup. Regulators had also documented people continuing to fish from the lakes.

That led to the Superfund listing, along with EPA requests for information from companies, local governments and the Army National Guard, all entities that have or had properties that drained into the lakes.

Cleanup 'not warranted'

EPA has notified media conglomerate Paramount Global, the state of Louisiana and the Kansas City Southern railroad, now Canadian Pacific Kansas City, that they could be held liable for the cleanup.

Paramount Global has denied being responsible.

Paramount Global is the successor of Westinghouse Electric Corp., which had a transformer reprocessing facility at Choctaw Drive north of the lakes, regulatory reports show. In 1983, state investigators found that waste oil contaminated with PCBs had been dumped at Westinghouse, winding up in the soil at the facility and in a nearby canal that drained into the lakes.

Westinghouse and its later owners agreed to clean up its site and the canal and, decades later, still continues to monitor their site's groundwater — but has never admitted fault, DEQ records show.

EPA noted state investigators in the 1980s identified Westinghouse as a source of PCB contamination in the lakes, adding the federal agency's own testing in 2022 identified the company as a potential source.  

Paramount Global, however, contends its expert analysis in 2022 found the fish are safe and the soil contaminants no worse, if not slightly better, than when DEQ decided to take no more action in 2002. Paramount Global told EPA that "the current site conditions do not warrant remedial action" and the lakes are safe for people to wade in or eat fish from.

As for Kansas City Railroad, EPA notes it owns land along and under the lake.

Asked for comment on their company's potential liability, railroad officials said that while they complied with EPA information requests, they dispute any responsibility for the PCB contamination in the lakes.

As for the state, which also owns land along and under the lakes, it's not clear where the administration of Republican Gov. Jeff Landry stands. The Louisiana State Attorney General's Office referred questions to the state Department of Environmental Quality, which didn't return a request for comment.

What's acceptable?

Based on their sampling, Paramount Global's experts found an additional lifetime cancer risk of 5 in 100,000 for adults and children who ate no more than one fish meal from the lake per month, far less than what DEQ found in the late 1990s. That's a risk level within what EPA finds acceptable.

But Rainer Lohmann, a University of Rhode Island professor who studies pollution in water and marine soils, said that even taking Paramount Global's claims at face value, eating one fish meal per month would remain "a serious fish advisory" that's just short of a "do not eat" warning.

Lohmann said that, for context, "typically eating fish several times per week is the target" for most state health departments.

He pointed that out although Paramount Global claims sediment concentrations haven't changed since the early 2000s, fish continue to accumulate contaminants.

"So I am not surprised that there is a fish advisory, and hence a problem," Lohmann said.