FISHING -- The organic substance used for decades to kill non-sport fish so trout fisheries can be established is being condemned by a Central  Washington group that's asking Gov. Jay Inslee to ban its use statewide.

Rotenone is derived from the roots of tropical plants which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has approved for use as a fish pesticide.

But John Arlt of Ellensburg claims rotenone is connected with health issues including Parkinsons even though no health agency has made a direct connection.

Rotenone has been used by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife in lake and stream rehabilitations for more than 70 years, and is commonly used by other fish and wildlife management agencies nationwide.

Opposition crops up in some circles every 12 years or so when a popular trout fishery is proposed for treatment to rid a lake of sunfish or the like that curb the efficient stocking of trout that grow to pleasing sizes for anglers.  In this case, the outcry is raised by the plan to treat Park and Blue lakes in Grant County. 

A few years ago, at least one property owner along Badger Lake in Spokane County was sending out information that rotenone kills off the lake and makes it a biological wasteland.  That myth has been disproved for decades as the trout fisheries planted after the treatments have flourished on natural aquatic insects. 

Trout fishing is wildly popular and an asset to local communities and small businesses. Take this manifesto Arlt has sent out to the state's media with a large grain of salt:

Residents of Park and Blue Lakes in Central Washington are demanding Governor Jay Inslee
impose an immediate ban on the use of rotenone in all Washington lakes. Park Lake and Blue
Lake are scheduled to be poisoned with a toxic combination of rotenone and related chemicals in
late October and early November.

Rotenone, which is the main fish killing ingredient to be applied, is now regarded as one of the
leading environmental toxins that triggers Parkinson's disease.
Approximately 140,000 pounds (70 tons) of the pesticide rotenone and added toxic chemicals are
slated to be dumped into these fresh water lakes by the Washington Department of Fish &
Wildlife (WDWF) prior to restocking with trout.

The dangers of rotenone are well known to Fish & Wildlife. A series of articles by the
Spokesman Review starting April 4, 2001, notes that the then State Fish & Wildlife Director, Jeff
Koenings, suspended the use of rotenone citing health concerns raised by an Emory University
study. Koenings ordered the suspension without consulting the nine member Fish & Wildlife
Commission. The response by fishermen and the Commission was swift. The Commission
reversed Koenings' suspension order on April 18, 2001 despite the public health risk.

Following the reversal, Fish & Wildlife stated rotenone use would be limited and would not even
be considered on lakes with houses near the shoreline. Koenings would resign his position in
2008.

In 2006, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) formally recognized the Parkinson's
link and requested pesticide manufacturers discontinue the use of rotenone except for fisheries
management.

In 2011, the National Institute of Health (NIH) concluded that persons exposed to rotenone were
2.5 times more likely to develop Parkinson's disease. The NIH study was led by Dr. Caroline
Tanner, who was then the clinical research director of the Parkinson’s Institute and Clinical
Center in Sunnyvale, California. Along with co-author Freya Kamel, Ph.D., at the National
Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), the researchers found the link between the
pesticides rotenone and paraquat with respect to the increased risk for developing Parkinson's
disease, the second most devastating neurological illness behind Alzheimer's.

Local residents of Blue and Park Lake are hopeful that Governor Inslee will make good on his
word, taking to heart statements from his 2014 announcement of his new water quality program
adopted in January of this year.

"We could set standards at a thousand grams per day with a cancer risk rate of 10-20, but it still
wouldn’t do anything to protect our children from exposure to too many toxics that cause
neurological and reproductive damage,” Inslee said. “This toxics reduction bill gives us the
tools to tackle pollutants at their source and make meaningful improvements in the health of our
water, our fish and our children.”

According to John Arlt, rotenone researcher and member of the Arlt Family Limited Partnership
(AFLP) which has been battling Fish & Wildlife since 2006 to stop these lake kills, states,
“WDFW has poisoned more than 500 lakes in Washington over the past 76 years, using rotenone
in increasingly toxic formulations. Most of the lakes have been poisoned multiple times.

WDFW has never conducted a test to make certain the rotenone ‘cocktail’ is safe and has not
migrated into wells around the poisoned lakes. Instead Fish & Wildlife relies on two studies from
Oregon and California showing the rotenone cocktail does not contaminate neighboring wells.”

According to Arlt, “These studies are not applicable to our lakes. They do not reflect the unique
hydrology of these Central and Eastern Washington lakes. Fractured basalt as found around Blue
and Park lakes allows both vertical and lateral water exchange between the lake and the potable
ground water surrounding it. Put a poison in our lakes and you poison our wells. Period!"
Despite how much WDFW defends rotenone use today, the reality is the agency is more driven
by maintaining fishing lakes than protecting the health of Washington citizens."

Testing of the Arlt family well during the last rotenone application to Park Lake by WDFW in
2006 found poisons showed up in both theirs and neighbors drinking water. Just prior to the
rotenone treatment there were no poisons found in the domestic well samples. Within days the
poisons were detected at high concentrations after the toxic chemicals were dumped into the lake
by Fish & Wildlife. Results of the tests were made available to state agencies, including
WDFW, in early 2007. WDFW took no action to test well samples themselves.

In 2015 the State of Washington Department of Health (DoH) raised concerns about the lack of
analytical testing for determining the safety of drinking water after rotenone applications by
WDFW. "...we think it is prudent public health practice to test drinking water analytically before
declaring that the water is safe to drink after a rotenone application." In the same
correspondence the DoH addressed more recent health risk concerns related to rotenone
applications and Parkinson's disease. "In addition, a number of new studies have shown elevated
risk of Parkinson’s disease in people who applied rotenone historically and suggest that
rotenone exposure may interact with dietary and genetic factors in producing Parkinson’s
disease."

Despite the wealth of health risks to local residents, and the likelihood of these poisons entering
domestic wells, WDFW is planning to go forward with poisoning the lakes. Currently over 361
drums of 'Parkinson's Disease Cocktail's' (rotenone plus other toxins) are sitting in a warehouse
waiting for final word to kill off these lakes so anglers can more easily catch the fish they
want...trout.

Residents of the lakes attended a public meeting held in Ephrata by WDFW in late July this
summer, voicing strong opposition to the use of rotenone in their local waters. The official
statement from WDFW in July was that no decision had yet been made to proceed with the
rehabilitation project until all public comments were reviewed and assessed. Even though this
was the official policy statement, 361 drums of rotenone had already been ordered by WDFW
and had already been delivered to Ephrata, WA before any public meetings or comments had
even taken place.

In early September WDFW issued a press release that removed all limits on fishing in Blue Lake
through October 21st and Park Lake until October 28th. The poisoning of Blue Lake is scheduled
for October 24th and November 1st for Park Lake. This will be the tenth round of rotenone based
treatments to Park and Blue Lakes since 1952, and thus the tenth round of exposure to residents.
Rotenone use in western Washington for fisheries management no longer takes place, primarily
due to public outcry against the practice on that side of the mountains. WDFW states that
upwards of sixty percent of opening day fisherman on Park and Blue Lakes originate from
outside the local counties, and are largely from the west side.

Long-time Blue Lake resident Don White, who now suffers from Parkinson's, points his finger
directly at Fish & Wildlife officials. John Arlt's father, Walter Arlt, who built their family cabin
on Park Lake in 1968 has been speaking with locals like Don White for several years on the
topic. "The residents are very upset that Fish & Wildlife seems to be consciously ignorant of
scientific facts. When I speak with Blue and Park Lake residents invariably someone else has
been diagnosed with Parkinson's, is being tested for the disease, or has died from a neurological
illness. Dumping tons of poisons into fresh water lakes has simply got to stop for the sake of
human health! You also have to consider the grandchildren of all of these people when these
toxic chemicals are being dumped into the lakes 100 feet from their wells, not to mention the
airborne exposure through the fumes that you can smell for days." Warning labels on the 2006
rotenone drums stated that rotenone fumes ‘are fatal if inhaled and [the chemicals] may be fatal
if swallowed.'

Other state agencies under Inslee's watch, the Department of Ecology which permits these
applications, and the Department of Health which oversees drinking water and public health
safety, are also aware of the situation.

In the meantime, the locals are faced with the reality of which of their longtime neighbors will be
the next diagnosed with Parkinson's disease or some other neurological disorder.