Tuesday evening will see a public forum with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality (ODEQ) discussing the Shurden-Leist industrial park.
Set to start at 6:30, the meeting will be held at the Henryetta civic center and the public is invited to attend.
This forum was organized to provide local residents with the history of the cleanup of the former Eagle-Pitcher smelter site. That cleanup started some 19 years ago and, since then, two businesses have started operations there. A certificate from the EPA and DEQ has been issued saying the site can be used for both commercial and industrial operations.smelter aerial
The Eastern Oklahoma Family Health Service is currently waiting for grant approval to build a health facility on part of the site.
"We want to dispel the rumors of the Shurden-Leist industrial park and give out all the facts as we know them today," said city manager Ted Graham.
One of those issues dealt with colored fish eggs discovered in 2006 with blue catfish in Lake Eufaula.
In July, a report was issued by the U.S. Geological Survey saying the discoloration was caused by an accumulation of stentorin — a fluorescent photoreceptive protein found in Stenton coeruleus, a single-cell microscopic animal.
The discolored fish eggs peaked in 2006 and 2007 coinciding with a fish kill along an 11-mile stretch of the Deep Fork River. It followed a sewage release from a wastewater treatment plant in the spring of 2000 and industrial effluent violations in 2005 and 2006 that started from the same area.
Robert W. Gale, a chemist with the USGS, says, "The observation of the pollution events followed by the discoloration of catfish ovaries is consistent with a stentor bloom in response to an episodic organic pollution event."
catfishHis study was conducted with help from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and with Rochelle McLemore and Dr. Stuart Woods from Connors State College. McLemore was a Connors graduate who was earning her bachelor's degree at Northeastern State University. Dr. Woods, is a biology professor at Connors State.
The pair first suspected heavy metals from the Henryetta smelter were the cause.
Gale said he first was concerned about those heavy metals but that was ruled out because levels of the heavy metals in specimen fish tissue did not fluoresce  at the observed levels.
In his report, Gale said he began looking at different bacterium because of the "excessive organic and nutrient loading" of the Deep Fork and North Canadian rivers that had occurred repeatedly from 1996 to 2000, the subsequent fish kill and other factors.
Through that investigation he narrowed the potential source to stentorin through the use of photospectrometry.
That bacterium was believed to have been eaten by thread fin and gizzard shad. Both are part of the blue catfish diet. The buildup was said to have been aided by the buildup over the years of unpermited wastewater discharges.

Download a copy of the USGS report here: {jd_file file==7}