LAKE CITY — Mom, dad and their twin sons, 3, were enjoying time outdoors and the boys were learning to fish from the new Lake City Marina breakwater. It was exactly what you’d like to see on a bright summer morning on the shore of Lake Pepin. I stopped to chat with Danielle and Nathan Espenson of Rochester and learn more about how they feel about new, very strict, recommendations on eating fish from some parts of the Mississippi River and Pepin.
The new suggestions are a continuation of the maddening litany of problems with river pollution, and contaminated fish, going back more than a century. More on that later. How’s fishing? I asked the couple.
“We are just catch and release fishing, just for fun,” Danielle said. How do they feel about the new very strict fish consumption recommendations for the Mississippi River and Lake Pepin from St. Paul to Wabasha? ADVERTISEMENT Recommendations? The Minnesota Department of Health recommends no pregnant or breastfeeding women or children younger than 15 should eat any fish because of per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, also known as forever chemicals.
Others should eat one meal a month from pools 2, 3 and 4. “Now they are telling me to worry,” she said. “I didn’t know that.
” Telling them that the fish they were catching were contaminated, even if they weren’t keeping them, made me feel kind of low but the couple took the news well. The information will absolutely make them more cautious about what fish they kee.
