Virus May Be Cause of Catfish Deaths

A virus may have been to blame for the death of 800 channel catfish last week at a lake in the Sepulveda Basin filled with reclaimed waste water, Los Angeles city officials said Wednesday.

Testifying before a Los Angeles City Council committee, the officials said tests by the state Department of Fish and Game indicate virus antibodies in the dead fish. The results are not conclusive, however, and further tests are being conducted.

The dead catfish were found last week at Lake Balboa, a facility that opened last year. It is filled with 20 million gallons of treated waste water from the nearby Tillman Water Reclamation Plant. Recreational fishing is permitted at the lake.

Councilwoman Ruth Galanter and others at City Hall have worried that the fish kill will cast a shadow over the city’s efforts to advance the use of reclaimed waste water and make it more acceptable to the public.

Initially, it was conjectured that the fish suffocated when a pump supplying water to the lake was shut down for several hours because of construction at the Tillman plant.

Reclaimed water is the “largest and most reliable source of water we have now,” Galanter said Wednesday. As such, the city should be encouraging its use, she said.

Richard Ginevan, a top official in the city’s Recreation and Parks Department, said that state water authorities have said the situation does not require closure of the lake or a ban on fishing there.

At Wednesday’s hearing of the council’s Environmental Quality and Waste Management Committee, Galanter said that if the reclaimed water was at fault, the problem must be remedied quickly. If the water is not the problem, she said, that conclusion needs to be communicated to the public.

Only about 10% of the fish population at Lake Balboa were killed last week, Ginevan estimated.