IF THE DDT STORY WAS WARMING UP DUE TO SPARKS OF PROtest around the state over spraying elm trees with DDT, it went white hot in early 1966.
Don Johnson, an outdoors writer for the Milwaukee Sentinel, shook things up with a series of articles on DDT concentrations in Wisconsin’s lakes and streams. “State Fish Swimming in DDT Waters” read one front-page story.1 Johnson’s lead was an eye-catcher: “If the same analytical yardstick were applied as it is used on red meat, fish in many Wisconsin waters could be classed unfit for human consumption—because of high pesticide content. However, the meat yardstick does not apply to fish, and authorities say there is no evidence of an acute health hazard.”
Johnson had been dogging the story for months, combing through data from a variety of sources. “State and federal agencies have been collecting mounting evidence of the situation in recent months, but have been reluctant to publicize their findings. Most plead that the results thus far are incomplete, and are inconclusive,” Johnson wrote.
Indeed, findings of several studies released in 1966 and 1967 showed DDT was present in virtually every water body in Wisconsin, with the highest concentrations near populated areas. It was explosive data, considering the potential impact on the billion-dollar Wisconsin fishing and tourism industries.
Johnson had been determined in his efforts to get at the information, and officials had resisted its release. He wasn’t the only one in pursuit of the information. Just days before his stories went to press, Lorrie Otto learned of the reports. Her advocacy efforts had become the equivalent of a full-time job by then. She was no longer the shy farm girl or timid housewife.
“One gray day, [Joseph] Hickey gave me an ink-wet report on DDT in Lake Michigan. I went from his office to the Shade Tree Conference [in Madison], where the Agriculture Department continued to recommend the use of DDT on elm trees,” she recalled. “When the meeting adjourned, and I was lifting my coat from a hanger in the hall, I noticed the nametag on the man next to me.” The man was a representative of the Wisconsin Conservation Department. “I looked directly at him and asked how could they continue to use DDT after the recent fish report?
“Surprised, he responded, ‘How do you know about that report?’ Then he told me every lake and river in our state contains DDT. At the time I didn’t know anything about the other lakes and rivers. I only knew about our 22,400-square-mile Lake Michigan.”2
Otto recalled his next comment: “Keep quiet about this. It will destroy our tourist industry. Do you realize how many fishing licenses we sell?” Otto baited him with a question about whether fishers would play musical chairs and rush to another state to fish. His reply: “Other states are just as bad as we are.”
She hustled back to Milwaukee, drove to the Sentinel office, and looked up Johnson, who she knew was following the issue. “He begged me not to mention this for at least another 24 hours,” she said, adding that Johnson had confided that the story took a long time to crack. It took him a while to pry the Conservation Department apart from the Department of Agriculture, he told her. While the Conservation Department had been moving steadily toward restricting DDT use, the impact of the fish findings was a tender matter given the amount of revenue generated for conservation activities by license sales.
Years later, Johnson recalled how the story unfolded. “The truth is, I could not have accomplished much without the complicity of some who literally put their jobs and careers on the line to help me tell the public what was happening,” he recounted in a guest editorial he penned for the Dunn County News in 2000.3 He had waited more than thirty years to tell that part of the story for a reason. “I have protected the identities for years, but it will do no harm to name some of them now,” he wrote. In fact, they deserved recognition, he added.
Johnson’s investigative work started after a conversation over a drink in Rice Lake with Ed “Doc” Schneberger, then fisheries chief of the Wisconsin Conservation Department. Johnson was concerned about the impact DDT was having on songbirds in communities trying to control Dutch elm disease. “It seemed evident that it [DDT] was killing songbirds and doing other environmental damage, but there was no solid proof,” Johnson explained.
“Doc Schneberger quietly confided that he was scared. He told me that state fish hatchery crews were no longer collecting musky eggs from fish in certain lakes because the eggs from those lakes were no longer viable. I pressed him for more information. He answered, ‘It’s up to you to find out why. You haven’t heard anything from me,’” Johnson would later recall.
So Johnson set out to do some sleuthing. He learned of research that had already been done on DDT contamination in fish and wildlife and “also that the frightening findings were in the possession of certain individuals at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the Conservation Department, and the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture.”
But no one was talking. “There appeared to be a conspiracy of silence. If the truth got out, agency heads feared the consequences to the tourism industry, sportfishing, and the already failing commercial fishing industry. As for the university, I suspected that research grants from chemical companies might be having some influence,” Johnson recalled.
Soon, he learned that musky eggs weren’t the only evidence of DDT contamination. Seagulls on Green Bay were no longer reproducing, Hickey’s research had showed, and, Johnson later wrote, “chubs laced with big doses of DDT were still being netted from Lake Michigan, smoked and sold for human consumption. But the public wasn’t being told.”
Johnson was getting closer, but he needed more. He pondered collecting and analyzing samples himself, but didn’t have the money to pay for the gas chromatograph tests that would have been needed.
Still, he persisted. “Without revealing details which could still embarrass someone, I can reveal that it was the late Walter Scott, assistant to the director of the Conservation Department, who saw to it that I finally found what I was looking for. (Walter had often been called ‘the conscience’ of the old WCD, and with good reason.) And back at the university, it was the late Prof. Joe Hickey, bless him, who confirmed that I had broken the code,” Johnson recalled.
Lorrie Otto’s recollections of the events are also on record. She noted that Lester Voigt, director of the Conservation Department, stonewalled Johnson, telling him that a joint release was planned and that all the states around the lake planned to release it at the same time. Her recollections of Johnson’s visit to Scott are also on record. She noted that Scott first told Johnson he couldn’t give him anything but that Johnson persisted. Scott stood up, opened a drawer, pulled out a stack of papers, slammed them on his desk, and walked out of his office.4
Otto acquiesced in Johnson’s Sentinel office the day he asked her to wait twenty-four hours. She was rewarded with major coverage in the paper. “The next morning, the Sentinel had the entire story from robins to mink to fish to worms,” she recalled. “At last—a big audience!”5 The story detailed a number of angles to the new findings. “Of hundreds of fish collected from 30 bodies of water around the state all were found to contain DDT,” Johnson reported at the time.6
He continued to hammer away at the DDT story, despite threats of lawsuits and demands by chemical companies that he be fired.7 “Fishermen Upset by Lake Pesticides,” was the headline on a January 29, 1966, Johnson story. The Department of Agriculture, Conservation Department, and University of Wisconsin researchers had released their findings after Johnson’s original exposé. Their research showed that significant amounts of DDT had been found in the tissues of fish taken from several inland lakes and outlying waters—including Lake Michigan and Lake Superior.8
“There were some attempts to discredit and intimidate me,” Johnson recalled in the Dunn County News.9 “Some editors worried about the accuracy of my reports and the consequences of printing them. And there were threats of lawsuits for astronomical sums, claimed as damages by the chemical makers.
“But, as he did a number of other times, Harvey Schwandner, executive editor of The Milwaukee Sentinel, backed me all the way. Harvey was a real newspaperman, of the old school.”
Johnson and the Sentinel went on to cover and, in his words, “campaign against” other environmental poisons and contaminants.
His early DDT reports in the Sentinel weren’t exactly new information. Concentrations of what appeared to be DDT had been identified in Lake Michigan fish several years earlier, and questions had been raised about the chemical’s impact on fish reproduction.10 But Johnson’s stories came at a time when Wisconsin was moving closer to a confrontation over DDT. They served to stir up the hunting and fishing community, broadening public support for a ban on DDT. In addition to the Izaak Walton League, several mainline hunting and fishing organizations jumped on the bandwagon, as did the fish and game industry. In 1969, the American Fishing Tackle Manufacturers Association would donate ten thousand dollars to help fund the Citizens Natural Resources Association’s efforts in Wisconsin. A check for five thousand dollars went directly to the CNRA. Another five thousand dollars, raised by individual members of the association, was presented to the Rachel Carson Trust for the Living Environment, a fund established by the National Audubon Society, with instructions that the funds be used in Wisconsin for the Department of Natural Resources hearing.
For the citizen activists, the findings provided new fodder. CNRA president Frederick Baumgartner sought to link the findings to their potential economic impacts. In a letter from the CNRA to “all organizations interested in conservation,” he warned of the potential threats DDT had on the health of fish, water quality, and the local economy. “The level of DDT and similar related persistent pesticides has risen to the point where scientists report the coho salmon fry can’t even grow in our hatcheries. . . . Also, the flesh is questionable as human or animal food,” he wrote. “The lake trout, steelhead and other fine game fish (even in our inland lakes) and our bald eagle, osprey and other fish-eating birds are suffering nesting losses. It’s time for action!”11
A full report issued by the Conservation Department just prior to the opening of the Wisconsin inland lake sportfishing season in 1967 added fuel to the fire. Researchers found DDT residues in fish from thirty-two lakes and thirty-one streams. Residues in some lakes may have reached levels harmful to fish, the department said, hastening to add that the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture and the Board of Health didn’t believe there was a hazard to people who ate the fish.12
The findings also correlated DDT residues in fish with use of the pesticide in the watersheds. Higher residues were found in “various urbanized, outdoor recreation and agricultural locations known or suspected to be areas of frequent pesticide use,” a 1967 Milwaukee Journal article noted.13 In addition to the normal suspects—household, lawn, farm, and forest insect control, and Dutch elm disease treatment—a finger was pointed at “bug bombs,” aerosol cans or foggers, used to kill mosquitoes in cottage and camp areas.
DDT wasn’t the only pesticide found in the fish. Dieldrin, a related but more toxic insecticide introduced as an alternative to DDT, was also detected.
The news on DDT concentrations in fish continued to roll out. Indeed, it would become a subplot throughout the course of the next two years and beyond, both at the state and local levels. In 1967, there were no federal standards for DDT concentrations in fish, although efforts to establish a threshold were underway.
Not much more than a year after Johnson broke the story about DDT residues in fish, a Sentinel headline read, “Lake Pesticides Reported Nearing ‘Lethal Level.’” Reporter Quincy Dadisman, who would cover the DDT hearing for Milwaukee’s morning newspaper, was quoting W. F. Carbine, regional director of the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, who issued that dire warning.
“Pesticides, herbicides and related chemicals represent an area of water quality change of major importance to fish and aquatic life,” said Carbine. He spoke at a Lake Michigan water quality conference called by Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall. “A continuation at high levels or an upsurge in pesticide application anywhere in the Lake Michigan basin could increase the pesticide concentration prevailing in the open lake from the present nonlethal level to a lethal level.”14
The fishery had undergone a number of other changes over the years, Carbine noted. The sea lamprey had devastated native lake trout populations, and nonnative alewives had a significant impact. With declining native populations, states sought to bolster sportfish opportunities in the lake by introducing species like the nonnative coho salmon. Perhaps anticipating a future problem, Carbine noted that pesticides especially impacted lake-dwelling fish such as coho that also spend part of their lives in streams, where higher concentrations of pesticides accumulated.
In August 1968, natural resource officials from the four Great Lakes states—Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin—issued a warning: “We believe that unless timely steps are taken to control persistent pesticides and other economic poisons, Lake Michigan’s usefulness will shrink to a fraction of its potential—indeed to the point of disaster.”15
The officials noted that DDT was likely responsible for the deaths of nearly one million coho salmon fry in Michigan and Wisconsin hatcheries that year, and that “irreparable contamination is imminent.” The warning urged a series of steps to address the problem, including the passage of new laws, citing examples of pending bills to create pesticide review councils in Wisconsin and Michigan. But the report did not expressly recommend banning DDT.
In step with the four-state warning, Wisconsin’s top conservation agency was becoming more vocal on the subject. In November 1969, just a couple weeks before the DNR’s administrative hearing on DDT began, the Wisconsin Board of Agriculture and the DNR’s Natural Resources Board—both of which are comprised of appointed citizens who oversee department operations—met jointly in Madison. The DNR was a new configuration, having inherited responsibilities from the former Conservation Department, Public Service Commission, Board of Health, and Board of Resource Development.
Walter Scott, whose new title was assistant to the deputy secretary of the DNR, spoke to the boards, noting their meeting was the first time conservation and agriculture boards had gathered jointly.
He reviewed some basic conservation history and then went on to speak about DDT and other persistent pesticides. Knowledge had grown over the course of twenty years of DDT use, he said. This included a better understanding of how pesticides like DDT persisted in the environment. “They also build up in the food chain of animals so the best predatory game fish are most vulnerable to these poisons as also are many desirable fish-eating and flesh-eating birds,” Scott noted.16 He also tied water quality to the state’s Public Trust Doctrine, established by the Wisconsin Supreme Court: “The right of the citizens of the state to enjoy our navigable streams for recreational purposes, including the enjoyment of scenic beauty, is a legal right that is entitled to all the protection which is given financial rights.”
This concept of “navigable waters” included, Scott asserted, “such things as fishing, swimming and wading, and so the preservation of water quality, as well as quality of the fishery and the total water-related environment, is of utmost concern.”
He went on to point out that research on lake trout reproduction in New York State in 1964 revealed that eggs would not hatch properly if they contained too much DDT or its residues. That was the year the Wisconsin Conservation Department had stopped all use of DDT on forest pest control.
Scott explained that in 1965 the Conservation Department began detailed studies to determine the levels of pesticide residue in fish taken from state lakes and streams. He cited the coho salmon fry dieoff of 1968, the published results of DDT and dieldrin residues in fish, and the joint statement issued by the conservation leaders of the Lake Michigan states. He also noted that of the fifty tons of DDT shipped into Wisconsin that year, thirty tons went for Dutch elm disease control efforts.
Scott even worked religion into his remarks while noting that Lake Michigan had historically yielded huge quantities of fish. “About 10,000 fishermen using thousands of boats harvested this crop from the Great Lakes in a type of farming which yields food very nutritious and desirable,” he said. “In fact, when Jesus fed the multitude he used only two fishes to go along with the five loaves that were available. The plea here is that every possible effort be made to restore the quality and maintain the quantity of fishery production in the Great Lakes.” Scott made no mention of commercial fishing methods that had depleted the fishery or of the impacts of nonnative species such as lampreys and alewives.
He did, however, cite a statement from a 1967 department publication: “The results of laboratory tests conducted over a period of years leads inescapably to the conclusion that the persistent chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides (particularly DDT) are progressively accumulating in our environment and in consequence are threatening fish and game interests.” He added: “This in turn affects the quality of our outdoor recreation resources and the tourist industry which generates a billion dollar annual value for the state.”
Scott went on to reference the upcoming DNR hearing, closing this way: “We are here today in a good cause with a promise of future meetings in the interest of the people’s welfare. Nothing should concern them more than their fish and wildlife and their public waters—except possibly the quantity and quality of their next meal. We need to assure them of both.”
Lorrie Otto remained impatient and unsatisfied with the slow-moving bureaucracy and those who tended it. In a September 1968 letter to Environmental Defense Fund attorney Victor Yannacone, she wrote: “It’s not all sheer terror or naïve glee out here, Vic. There are long plateaus when I think that those colorless, weak sneaks in the Wisconsin Conservation [Department] are going to defeat us. There isn’t a one of them who has enough guts to support you in a lawsuit.”17
There’s no record of whether Otto was present at that joint meeting of the state’s DNR and Department of Agriculture boards. If she was, perhaps her feelings about Scott and his colleagues were about to change. Viewed in the prism of history, Scott’s speech was anything but colorless or weak. As the studies on DDT concentrations in fish emerged in Wisconsin and other states, the DNR had a hook to hang its hat on: fishing was a big business in Wisconsin, and sportsmen’s licenses helped fund an array of other DNR duties, including environmental enforcement.
The DDT hearing would begin in December 1968. As the hearing continued into 1969, word came of an explosive new finding. “FDA Cites Pesticide, Asks Seizure of Coho,” read the page-one headline in the March 27, 1969, Milwaukee Sentinel. Reporter Richard Bradee in the newspaper’s Washington bureau reported that the Food and Drug Administration had requested seizure orders for 21,000 pounds of frozen coho salmon from Lake Michigan that tests indicated contained hazardous amounts of DDT and dieldrin. The fish had been caught near the eastern shore of the lake and processed by a Grand Rapids, Michigan, company.
Tests showed the coho contained up to nineteen parts per million of DDT and a smaller amount of the more toxic dieldrin. “The tolerance for DDT and Dieldrin in fish is zero, meaning that fish cannot be sold if they show any trace of either pesticide,” Bradee wrote. US senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, who had been pushing for a DDT ban for several years, called the need for the seizure orders “a tragedy.” Bradee quoted him as saying, “This is the first case where the concentration of DDT has traveled hundreds of miles and gone through the food chain of a half dozen organisms and ended up in hazardous residues of coho salmon.”
It seems that the coho had raised quite a stir. A series of stories cascaded from that original report.
Robert Finch, secretary of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, called a high-level meeting to deal with a growing political controversy over the tainted coho, reported the Milwaukee Sentinel on April 9, 1969. He summoned representatives of federal and state agencies, along with US congressmen and conservation and health officials from Wisconsin, Illinois, and Michigan. One of those congressmen, Representative Gerald Ford of Michigan, charged the FDA with “pure speculation” about the health hazard caused by DDT in coho.18 The FDA did not, the future president noted, raise the same doubts about canned salmon from other parts of the country. “I can imagine the hue and cry from people all over the United States if all fish that have any residue in them were prohibited from being caught or consumed,” Ford said in a speech before the US House of Representatives.
The FDA moved quickly, establishing on April 22 a temporary tolerance standard of five parts per million in commercially sold fish. Permanent guidelines would be set after a six-month study, the FDA said.19 Almost immediately, the temporary standard drew complaints. The Michigan Natural Resources Department predicted the state’s commercial fishing industry faced a $2.5 million annual loss under the new tolerance level.20 Michigan’s sports and commercial fishing industry was said to have a $60 million annual economic impact.
Meanwhile, with the DDT hearing underway in Wisconsin, the first witness called by the Task Force for DDT of the National Agricultural Chemicals Association said fish caught in Wisconsin were safe to eat, despite fears of DDT contamination. Testifying on April 29, 1969, Dr. Wayland J. Hayes Jr., former chief of the toxicology laboratory of the US Public Health Service, pointed to a frequently cited piece of research in which measured doses were fed to convict volunteers at federal correctional institutes. They received doses of 0.05 to 0.5 milligrams daily, which Hayes said was about two hundred times the amount of DDT ingested from the environment by an average person.21 At the end of the experiment, from twelve to twenty-one months after they started, no deleterious effects from eating DDT could be found in the men, Hayes said.
Other newspaper reports speculated that inland waters might be closed to fishing, since stream species had higher concentrations of DDT than Lake Michigan fish. By September, Wisconsin governor Warren Knowles and his counterparts in four other midwestern states asked the FDA to establish “realistic tolerance levels for DDT in fish.”22 In November 1969, a committee of Upper Great Lakes state health officials filed a petition asking for a fifteen parts per million tolerance in edible parts of coho salmon and ten parts per million in other fish.
By that time, another story had played out in Wisconsin. While the DNR hearing had proceeded in early 1969, the Wisconsin Legislature began its own hearings on a bill to ban DDT. That’s when a northern Wisconsin conservation activist decided to stir things up in a big way.