Lake pollution concerns after Hurricane Laura

LAKE CHARLES, La. (KPLC) - In the days since the hurricane, many Lake Charles residents have seen a sheen on the water.

At times, the odors have been almost unbearable for some and some swear they have smelt sewage.

Leo Reddoch who lives on Shell Beach Drive thinks it is mainly dead fish.

“The smell is horrendous downwind. Hopefully, the wind doesn’t stir around too much and disturb the rest of the community. We know we’ve got dead fish. At Rita we had a lot of tropical fish, I’ve seen a few of those up in here. I saw floating dead crabs, so, it got to almost everything that was in the water alive, is dead today.”

Reddoch expects relief will come once a good rain comes and flushes it out. But, he knows with so many blue roofs, now is not the time.

“As you can see, we’ve got some sheen on the lake out there, dead fish schools, just floating out there. It’s going to take some water to flush it out, which would be rain and right now we don’t need rain with all these roofs. It’s a blessing we have the channel the way it is, so we can get rid of it quick when we do get some flushing action. Lake Charles is our community, our home, I would have to say it would have to be much, much worse for us to leave.”

Louisiana Department of Environmental Equality officials believe that the sheen is primarily from decaying vegetation, but they have teams out assessing the area to make sure there is not anything more or something of an industrial nature.

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