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Virginia health board lifts Kepone ban

By CAROLYN CLICK

RICHMOND, Va. -- The Virginia Board of Health Tuesday lifted the last ban on commercial fishing in the lower James River because levels of the pesticide Kepone have diminished to negligible.

The emergency ban will expire June 30, ending issues surrounding a 13-year environmental disaster that began when thousands of pounds of the fire ant and roach killer were dumped into the James River at Hopewell.

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Robert Stroube, deputy commissioner for community health services, said he is satisfied with the board's decision, which followed a recommendation issued in March by Gov. Gerald Baliles.

Baliles made his decision to allow the ban to expire based on information that levels of the pesticide had declined substantially in fish samples and posed no threat to human health.

Health officials say they will continue to monitor for the presence of Kepone in finfish.

The Kepone disaster began when Allied Chemical Corp., and its sub-contractor, Life Science Products Co., dumped thousands of pounds of Kepone-laden waste into the James.

Mills Godwin, who was governor at the time, feared a threat to public health and closed the lower James to all commercial fishing in late 1975, idling thousands of watermen who had made their living from the river and its tributaries.

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Since then, restrictions on the taking of finfish and shellfish have been modified or lifted as levels of Kepone declined. The restriction that will expire prohibited the taking of striped bass, croaker and American eel year round, and placed restrictions on the taking of gray trout and bluefish.

Erik Barth, deputy chief of fisheries management for the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, said some restrictions, unrelated to Kepone, will remain on striped bass and gray trout, but some other species may be harvested commercially year round.

'There will probably be more fishing for gray trout, croaker and American eel,' Barth said. 'Those are popular commercial fishes.'

The state health department began investigating the Kepone problem in 1975, shortly after Life Science took over pesticide production from Allied and set up shop in an abandoned service station.

Health officials shuttered Life Sciences later that year, after officials discovered that the Hopewell sewage system was virtually shut down because Kepone waste clogged the system's digesters.

Some Life Science workers, who had toiled in an environment of Kepone dust, were hospitalized, suffering from temporary liver and nervous system problems. The most severely affected male employees at the plant became temporarily sterile.

Allied and Life Sciences were fined more than $18 million for their role in the disaster, but after setting up an $8 million Virginia environmental foundation, a federal judge reduced Allied's fine to $5 million.

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The company paid undisclosed settlements to more than three dozen employees and about 230 watermen, and was required to pay for river clean-up.

Environmentalists had predicted it could take a century for the river to cleanse itself of the pesticide.

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