Effort to Rid Lake of Pike Leaves a Poisonous Legacy

When state wildlife officials poisoned Lake Davis nearly six months ago to rid the pristine trout habitat of a predatory fish called the northern pike, they promised that the effects would be short-lived.

They promised that the lake--this tiny Eastern Sierra city’s primary drinking water supply--would be chemical-free, back on tap and restocked with trout before it iced over for the winter.

They promised that the treatment, which was deemed necessary to keep the voracious pike from threatening the state’s salmon fisheries, would take but a small bite out of the vital tourism economy here, 50 miles northwest of Reno.

They were wrong on all counts.

Today, the city is bracing for a water shortage, distributing conservation kits and threatening mandatory rationing because at least one potentially harmful chemical is still mysteriously present in Lake Davis, making the water undrinkable.

The lake is still free of fish because the state Department of Fish and Game will not reintroduce the trout until the water tests clean for all compounds applied during a controversial chemical offensive in October that spawned national attention and local anger.

Since then, the agency has been fined $250,000 by the state for allowing the poison to leak out of Lake Davis and flow five miles down Grizzly Creek toward the Feather River. It has been cited by the Northern Sierra Air Quality Management District for violating public nuisance laws during the poisoning.

And now, business owners who limped through a winter without revenues from ice fishing are looking ahead to a summer of uncertainty and wondering if they will still be operating when Lake Davis is certified healthy again--whenever that is.

“Our impact began last April when the state began draining the lake” in preparation for the poisoning, said Stephen Clifton, owner of Leonards market. “The impact since April is on the order of $300,000 in lost sales, and we’re just one business. I don’t see recovery in three years in terms of sales.”

The saga of Lake Davis began in 1994, when state wildlife officials believe that a rogue angler introduced the northern pike into the alpine body of water. The fish is not native to waters west of the Mississippi.

Biologists feared that if the pike were to escape from the lake and migrate to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta 130 miles away, the California aquatic industry would be threatened.

Many Portola residents acknowledged that the pike was a potential threat. But the bigger threat, they said, was a government that would swoop in, ignore their protests and poison their drinking water to protect someone else.

Protests Staged to Halt Poisoning

The population of this railroad and logging region--already hard hit by cutbacks in the lumber industry--fought for two years to halt the treatment, arguing that there were safer means of killing the pike.

In a last-ditch effort to stop the application of a piscicide called rotenone to the placid lake, four protesters--including Bill Powers, a city councilman and school principal--braved hypothermia and chained themselves to a buoy in the chilly water.

But the $2-million poisoning effort went on as planned. Sort of. Local officials contend that the agency promised to apply the chemicals underwater. Instead, white-suited agents in small power boats floated a brown stream of poison onto the water’s surface as protesters demonstrated onshore.

Rita Scardaci, director of the Plumas County Health Services Department, said that more than 80 health complaints were filed starting almost immediately after the lake was poisoned. They peaked 10 days later and are still trickling in, she said.

“There were upper respiratory aggravations--nasal and oral--and a few individuals had burning in their lungs and eye irritation,” Scardaci said. “There were a handful of cases of skin irritation, headaches and nausea. . . . We also believe that there was some suppression of individuals’ immune systems.”

Fran Roudebush, the Plumas County supervisor who spearheaded the anti-poison effort, said that her laryngitis-like symptoms lasted for two weeks, as did her son’s severe headaches.

The big question is how something so long-planned could go so wrong so fast and so badly?

The way Nick Villa, the Department of Fish and Game’s senior biologist brought in to manage the aftermath of the treatment, analyzes it, the problem was not in execution but in expectation.

“The only screw-up was what we agreed to,” Villa said. “I wouldn’t say we lied. We pushed the envelope of our capability. . . . It’s not a good way to do business.”

For starters, Villa said, his agency promised the California Regional Water Quality Control Board that the poison would go no farther afield than a few yards down the streams that Lake Davis feeds.

“That was not a realistic expectation,” Villa said. “It was a false promise from one of our pesticide experts. Instead of several yards, it went several miles.”

Considering the goal of the agency--to kill off all the fish in Lake Davis in an effort to eradicate the pike--the large numbers of fish that died along four or five miles of Grizzly Creek “was not a big impact,” Villa said.

“But because we entered into this agreement [to contain the poison], we looked like buffoons,” he said.

The agency also promised that the rotenone and its byproducts would be gone from Lake Davis within a month. Dr. David Spath, chief of the division of drinking water and environmental management at the state Department of Health Services, said that the rotenone dissipated within five weeks.

Trichlorethylene, a carcinogen that is a byproduct of rotenone’s manufacture, was gone within two weeks. The continuing problem, however, is a chemical called piperonyl butoxide, a so-called synergist that increases the toxicity of pesticides.

At a heated community meeting March 30, Spath told a jeering audience of Portola residents that “we’re all sort of mystified about this one chemical and why it has not dissipated sooner.”

Chemical Proves Curiously Tenacious

On Thursday, shortly after taking another set of water and sediment samples from Lake Davis, Spath said that the mystery is why piperonyl butoxide is still in the water.

“The manufacturer suggests that it should degrade quickly,” Spath said of the chemical, which causes cancer in mice. “But it degrades well under sunlight and biological activity. The conditions are not conducive for that. There’s an icecap on the lake. It’s very cold. The microbiological activity is very low.”

For now, there is little to do but wait until the weather improves and the chemical dissipates. The time frame, officials say, is anyone’s guess. It is this uncertainty that most grinds at the citizens of Portola, that makes emotions still run high, six months into the poisoning’s aftermath.

So high, in fact, that more than 200 women and men crowded into the Veterans Memorial Hall on March 30 for a heated town meeting on water issues at Lake Davis--even though the NCAA basketball championships were being televised at the same time.

Mayor Greg Stevenson warned residents during the meeting that as the snow melts and the city’s summer residents flow back into this town of 2,045, a water shortage will probably begin by May 1.

The Department of Fish and Game is trucking in about 24,000 gallons of water each day for some far-flung residents, barely keeping up with current demand. With warmer weather, the water that the agency has been tapping will be needed elsewhere, the population will expand, and Lake Davis’ water will become more necessary than ever. But it will probably not be available.

“We are trying to do everything we can to supply potable water to residents,” Stevenson said. “We are asking you at this point to watch your water use. If we have to enforce our water ordinances, we could get through a water shortage.”

Possibility of Financial Aid

State officials told the restive crowd that they were making efforts to bring the area back from the poisoning, that they had stocked nearby streams and Frenchman Reservoir with trout to attract more tourists and that they were struggling to ensure an adequate alternative water supply.

They told of their efforts to have the trout season in the nearby middle fork of the Feather River open Saturday instead of the last Saturday in April in an effort to bring fishermen--and their wallets--to the area earlier.

They discussed the possibility of financial assistance to affected businesses, but made no promises. They talked about bills wending their way through the state Legislature that include stiffer regulation to prevent another replay of the Lake Davis debacle.

But the crowd wasn’t having any of it.

“I want to address you guys sitting there telling us you’re trying to do this and you’re trying to do that,” said Don Nance, a 14-year resident of Portola. “All I’m hearing is you don’t know. You don’t have answers. You’re immune. Well, our kids are not immune from poison.”

The most plaintive were business owners like Tony Olson and Kathy Takahashi, who own cabins and campgrounds and a general store a stone’s throw from the troubled lake.

Local officials estimate that most tourism-related enterprises have taken a 30% to 40% loss because uncertainty and fear about the lake have put a damper on business for the past year.

“Are you saying you’re willing to help us because we’re going under?” asked Olson, who built Lake Davis Cabins from the ground up three years ago and now fears that he will lose the business to foreclosure. “Are you going to take a little bit of responsibility for this? . . . Are you going to help us?”