For Immediate Release
Contact: CHARLIE LeDUFF
April 24, 2026
River Is Source of Food, and Worries
New York Times
RIVERHEAD, N.Y.-Joyce Anne Miles Johnson spends warm days on the muddy banks of the Peconic River. She lives in a corrugated steel box built by the government on a dusty lot. In her home is a chest of drawers, a mattress, a muttering old man and two fishing nets. She eats government food: cheese and cereals in plain white wrapping. She eats at the Congregational soup kitchen, and now that the weather has turned, she eats whatever can be pulled from the river.
"Boy, I just love to watch people fish," said Ms. Johnson, who is 45. Fresh fish is a fine thing, but it's not as though she enjoys getting it from the Peconic. Ms. Johnson, the men with nets in their hands, the children who watch them, the town supervisor and most of the East End of Long Island know that the headwaters of the Peconic start on the grounds of the Brookhaven National Laboratory, about 17 miles upstream.
Now that fishing season has started, several groups have gone to the State Department of Environmental Conservation on behalf of people like Ms. Johnson who eat fish from the river, asking that the state post warnings about pollutants along the most heavily fished areas of the river. The laboratory, a research center owned by the Federal Department of Energy, pumps about 800,000 gallons of treated waste water a day into the Peconic, where the river starts as little more than a ditch. Laboratory officials acknowledge that radioactive nuclides and heavy metals were routinely discharged into the water in the past. A few years ago, people near the lab were told that the ground water was contaminated by chemicals used at the laboratory and that radioactive tritium from a research reactor was leaking into the ground.
The laboratory's response was quick. More than $250 million is being spent to clean up the 5,300-acre campus and the river. Extensive monitoring of the air and water is also being done. The radioactivity in the soil and fish is low, less than 10 percent of the threshold considered unsafe for human consumption, the State Department of Health has determined. The dumping of heavy metals into the Peconic River has all but stopped, scientists say. "We are well below the levels that are permitted," said John Meersman, manager of Brookhaven's environmental restoration division. "We are well below levels that would pose a health risk."
But little is known about the long-term effects of eating from the river, critics contend. Once heavy metals enter the body, they stay there, biologists say, and can cause maladies from cancer to irregular functioning of the vital organs. When exposed to even low doses of radiation, the immune system is weakened.
What, if anything, may have happened to people who eat fish from the Peconic River is not known. "The science does not exist to start from the outlet pipe at the lab and be able to determine what the human health outcome is because there are too many variables," said Dr. James Shine, professor of aquatic chemistry at Harvard University's School of Public Health. "It's hard to say how much fish is bad. You don't want to scream wolf, but if there is a potential problem, people should know about it." Scott Cullen, the legal counsel of Standing for Truth About Radiation, said, "We're not saying the sky is falling. We're saying that there are a lot of unknowns and we should be cautious and give people information." Standing for Truth, an East Hampton group, filed papers with the State Department of Environmental Conservation to seek the posted warnings. It was joined by the Eastern Long Island Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and Fish Unlimited Inc., a fishermen's organization.
"Most people that fish in that river are black," said Lucius Ware, president of the N.A.A.C.P. chapter. "They've been fishing in it their whole lives. You can't taste mercury, you can't taste tritium and you can't taste agricultural pesticides. Some people don't know they are getting a pretty steady diet of it, and no one seems to care."
From slack tide until the river is full with moonlight, fishermen are there at the mouth of the tea-colored Peconic, scooping up fish. They are mostly black, descendants of farm laborers and factory workers who came from the South two or three generations ago. But the factory jobs have moved away, and most of the farms have been paved over.
As the sun set, an old man filled a bucket with alewives, silver fish related to the herring and not easy to eat because the small amount of meat is laced with spidery bones. Men who drank from paper bags stared into the bucket at the fish, which came from the ocean seeking brackish waters where fresh water meets salt. Last year a couple of men wearing white coats and carrying clipboards came to look at the fish, not only the ocean spawners like the alewives, but also the freshwater fish like pickerel and perch and catfish.
"Yes sir, they came for a day, then they was gone," said Willett Childress, one of the fishermen. "Never hear nothing more." The people are concerned about that, but no one likes to talk about it. Even if the signs were posted, "it ain't likely anyone would pay them no mind," said a woman sitting by the side of the river. She added, "People got to eat, and if their belly's empty, they'll eat most anything."
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