Are The Fish Safe To Eat From The James?

[Predator1]

Are the Fish safe to eat? A friend of mind use to work for the city. Said there were several billion gallons of sewer pumped into the James each year from the sewer pump stations. I have eaten fish from the James and was wondering if this were true. If so, THAT AINT GOOD. Just a good catch and release river. What does anyone else know about this.

[zander]

It is fine to eat the fish.

[Fish Bork]

I hope so I just baked up 5 different species I caught on Sunday and had a nice little lunch... ack... gag... naw they were delicious. 1 nice largemouth, 1 goggle-eye, 1 bluegill, 1 white bass and 2 longears yummy

[Predator1]

Thanks guys, my stomach is feeling better now. I too have been eating the fish out of the james for the last 5 years. So far I am in good health. Just wanted to know what everyone else thought.

[Al Agnew]

I gotta say I'd be just slightly uneasy about eating large quantities of fish from the James below Springfield. Their treated sewage is released into the river, and with the population of Springfield that's a lot of sewage. Back 20 or more years ago, Springfield's treatment plant was overloaded and the river was getting WAY too much fertilization from the sewage, but it seems to be better now. HOWEVER, while modern treatment plants do a good job of removing organic waste, we are finding out that they don't remove a lot of the pharmaceuticals that go through the human body without being fully metabolized, and they also don't remove other common household chemicals that get washed down the drain. In some parts of the country, these chemicals are believed to be responsible for fish with sexual and other disorders (like male fish with female organs). If what's in the water is doing that to the fish, who knows what it could do to us. While Springfield and surrounding towns aren't as big as some of the cities that dump their waste into those rivers, it's big enough.

So while I wouldn't hesitate to eat fish now and then from the James, I don't think I'd want to eat a meal of James River fish a couple times a week.

[zander]

There are some studies done from Baylor University looking at the accumulation of pharmaceutical and personal care product chemicals in the tissue of longeared sunfish in some streams in north Texas. They did find that in "clean" streams the fish there are "clean" of these chemicals and in streams where waste water effluent is present the fish there, muscle tissue, liver, nervous tissue all contain trace amounts of these chemicals. Keep in mind with a normal prescription we take milligrams of these chemicals. The concentration they found in the fish tissue was in nanograms/wet gram of tissue. So we can conclude that eating one little bluegill is not going to have the same effect as eating one little blue pill (couldn't resist). Low low concentrations. I bet if we put the beef that we eat through a GC/MS we could find some alarming things in there as well. I would not want to eat the fish more than a couple of times each month (which is more than I eat anyway) but I'd worry more about the other stuff we eat all the time.

[RSBreth]

Yeah, this is a great topic for the James, or really any of our rivers. I've started and stopped writing a big comparison article of fish advisories from across the state, but I'm kind of at an impasse right now. After you talk to enough biologists you kind of get to where you throw all of the little comments they say "off the record" together, and come to the conclusion that we all are exposed to things that are iffy in the environment, whether it's from the commercially raised meat or veggies we buy at X-Mart, or the fish we keep and eat out of the most remote stream. I wouldn't hesitate to eat a Walleye or Rock Bass out of the James every once in a while, just like I eat an occasional Crappie or Rock Bass out of the Finley.

I feel fine.

Most of the time, I feel great.

[mdolomieu1]

To add to Al's comments:

When the upper reaches of Wilson's Creek above the Springfield Treament Plant go dry in the summer, the treatment plant becomes the main source of water in Wilson's Creek. If you take a walk along Wilson's Creek at the South Creek Greenway (across the creek from the treatment plant), you can see that above the outflow, the creek essentially remains dry throughout the summer.

Additionally, has anyone noticed all the warning signs regarding the water in Wilson's Creek inside Wilson's Creek National Battlefield?

[Gallagher]

To add to Al's comments:

When the upper reaches of Wilson's Creek above the Springfield Treament Plant go dry in the summer, the treatment plant becomes the main source of water in Wilson's Creek. If you take a walk along Wilson's Creek at the South Creek Greenway (across the creek from the treatment plant), you can see that above the outflow, the creek essentially remains dry throughout the summer.

Additionally, has anyone noticed all the warning signs regarding the water in Wilson's Creek inside Wilson's Creek National Battlefield?

Yep, AND after seeing that,... I wouldn't eat anything from any water source that flows south of there. (Of course I've been aware of that for years), I had to caution a family about the quality of water as they were swimming right there at the small steel bridge, on a trip to the yard waste area. I could tell they weren't "locals" and they probably just found a convenient place to swim, unfortunatley they chose about the worse possible place to 'go for a dip".

[Predator1]

Yep, AND after seeing that,... I wouldn't eat anything from any water source that flows south of there. (Of course I've been aware of that for years), I had to caution a family about the quality of water as they were swimming right there at the small steel bridge, on a trip to the yard waste area. I could tell they weren't "locals" and they probably just found a convenient place to swim, unfortunatley they chose about the worse possible place to 'go for a dip".

Well with all that said. The James flows right slap dab into Table Rock. I eat fish from below McCord's Bend.

For every problem, there is a solution. Then there is just plain simple catch and release fishing. So, Where is our cleanest fish factory?