Residents raise stink over foul odor

Jenny Marder

Residents who live near the Talbert Channel are panicked over what

could be causing the death of hundreds of fish in the waterway.

State health officials say there’s no evidence that the white

substance in the water or the potent odor emanating from the channel

is a public health risk but said they can’t be sure until they get

the test results back.

It was early last week that residents began noticing the strange

consistency of the neighborhood channel.

“The whole channel turned white, like a chemical had been dumped

in it, and the smell has been terrible,” resident John Scott said.

“It’s unbelievable, the smell.”

Brian Visnoski, who’s been spearheading the effort to get the

problem checked out by health officials, noticed the odor for the

first time on Sept. 15. He smelled what he described as a chemical

odor at Eader Elementary School and at the adjacent Eader Park. He

followed the smell to the Talbert Channel, where he found grunions,

gobies and a small shark at the surface of the water. They were

struggling to breathe, he said.

Since then, he’s seen scores of dead fish floating down the

channel or beached on the rocks.

Visnoski fears that it’s a chemical spill and the cause of the

sore throats and splitting headaches that his family and neighbors

have been suffering.

Michael McDermott, game warden with the California Department of

Fish and Game, said that it’s likely not a chemical spill.

“I don’t see any activity out there that could be related to

illegal dumping,” McDermott said. “Usually you can see a passageway

of the production and the material leaving something and going into

the water. If it was an illegal dumping situation, they probably

wouldn’t be getting the smells and odors they’re getting.”

Low oxygen content in the water, possibly caused by high water

temperatures, could be killing the fish, McDermott said.

It could be several weeks before the lab results of the six

samples that were taken from the channel are analyzed in a Sacramento

lab, he said. The water samples will be tested at a water-quality lab

and a pesticide lab.

Scientists are also not ruling out the possibility of red tide,

which has settled over Huntington’s beaches in the past few weeks.

Red tide is a natural phenomenon caused by an overabundance of red

dinoflagellates, a kind of plankton, in the ocean. Its

characteristics include discoloration of the water and a foul odor.

Visnoski, whose hobbies include fishing and marine biology, is

confident that red tide is not the culprit.

“We go through red tide almost every year and don’t a smell up

here,” he said. “This was a strong chemical smell.”

The smell from the channel continues to drift into homes, the

neighborhood elementary schools and the local library. Visnoski wants

to know where it came from and what it is.

“My concern is what it’s done to our health and to that of other

people that aren’t aware of it,” Visnoski said.

* JENNY MARDER covers City Hall. She can be reached at (714)

965-7173 or by e-mail at [email protected].