Lake Quannapowitt boating incident

The Lake Quannapowitt boating incident^[1] was the result of a bass fishing tournament held in Lake Quannapowitt, which had become dangerously toxic due to the illegal dumping of industrial waste in the lake.

Background[]

Before the Great War, Lake Quannapowitt was home to an annual bass fishing tournament that was held on the fourth of July to commemorate America's independence day, with the 2077 tournament sponsored by the city of Boston and General Atomics International.^[2] The lake was managed by the Massachusetts Department of Natural Resources, and in June 2077 quarterly water quality testing showed a massive spike in pollution. Their testing showed a rapid degradation of water quality, with levels of contaminants three times that of the previous quarter, which the monitoring staff suspected was caused by illegal dumping of industrial waste.

They requested the lake be closed to the public and an inquiry launched into the waste disposal practices of Corvega, General Atomics International, and Saugus Ironworks, however their request to close the lake was denied.^[3] At the Department's request staff repeated testing on the 25th of June, and a monitor sent samples of water to a colleague at the Nahant Oceanological Society. Both confirmed the results of the earlier testing, with Nahant noting that contamination was fifteen times their sample from the previous year.^[4][5] The monitoring staff again requested a public inquiry, and the cancellation of the annual fishing tournament. Their request for the lake's closure and for the tournament to be cancelled was denied, and at Boston Mayor Hildenbrand's insistence the tournament went ahead.

The tournament was disastrous, with none of the participants catching a fish, 27 people becoming seriously ill after contact with the lake water, and an unknown number of deaths after a boat sank in the lake, with the two surviving passengers being hospitalised with radiation burns.^[6] In the aftermath, the lake was finally closed to the public, and on the 16th of July a lawsuit against the city of Boston was launched by the people injured in the tournament and the families of the people aboard the boat that sank.

Publicly, the city complied with the lawsuit, sending a notice to the Lake Quannapowitt monitoring station requesting the preservation of records relevant to the events of the fishing tournament, but privately city attorney J. Richard Thorndike ordered the monitoring terminal be wiped.^[1] The outcome of the lawsuit is unknown, however the staff at the lake ignored Thorndike's order to wipe the monitoring terminal. By 2287, the lake is still extremely contaminated, with the monitoring station's automated sensors reporting contaminant levels in excess of the sensors capacity to measure.^[7]

Appearances[]

The Lake Quannapowitt boating incident is mentioned only in Fallout 4.

References[]