The Lower Watts Bar Fish Advisory

Many bodies of water in the world have been contaminated by polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) from a variety of sources. The Lower Watts Bar Reservoir was contaminated in part by the DOE ORR operations and has been extensively studied as Superfund site.

The State of Tennessee has placed a PCB fishing advisory on the Lower Watts Bar Reservoir. This is a three part advisory based on the species of fish as follows:

  1. All persons should not eat catfish, stripped bass, and hybrid striped bass-white bass.
  2. Children under six, pregnant women and nursing mothers should not eat white bass, sauger, carp, smallmouth buffalo and largemouth bass.
  3. All other persons should limit consumption of the species in #2 to 1.2 pounds per month.

The LWBR is safe for all other types of water recreations as significant PCBs occurs only in bottom feeder and predator fish as well as turtles. Pan fish such as crappie, blue gills and bream can be eaten any quantity. Also there are a number of things a fisherman can do to reduce their intake of PCBs and continue to enjoy fishing. These include cleaning and cooking fish to avoid the fatty tissues, eating only the smaller and younger fish, etc. Unless the tourist fisherman also fishes in other contaminated waters or eats a year's allotment of fish in one fishing trip, they have nothing to fear, as it is the long-term consumption that matters. In addition, the above guidelines are very conservative. The following pages contain more information concerning PCBs and fishing:

Comments on these pages may be directed to: brooks50@ comcast.net

The LWBR Fishing Advisory pages are jointly contributed in part by the Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee, Inc. and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Control.