What do you know about hazardous waste?: Mutated Trout Raise New Concerns Near Mine Sites

Monday, March 5, 2012

Mutated Trout Raise New Concerns Near Mine Sites

In a previous blog I had talked about what acid mine drainage is and now I will share some recent news about the effects of AMDs on wildlife.
On February 22nd, the NY Times had an article about Mutated Trout from a nearby mine site. The issue arose from the discovery of a two-headed baby trout in southern Idaho.

The J.R. Simplot Company had been in the midst of a few mining operations, one being the Smoky Canyon mine (phosphorus mine), which polluted the surrounding creeks where baby trout were found with two heads or other deformities. The company made a report that went on for many hundreds of pages, stating that the metal byproduct, selenium, would actually be safe to dump into the creeks at higher levels than was currently permitted even though, if you know the chemical selenium, you would know that it is extremely toxic to both fish and birds.
But after the discovery of these deformed fish, scientists and environmentalists brought up the issue again and found that the report made by the company hadn't been complete, rather it had left out important information. The federal Fish and Wildlife Service was asked to go over the company's report and compare with their own research. Of course the company's report was biased and lacked analysis of selenium's impact on any of the many species living in the watersheds. According to this article by Kaufman,

"Selenium is a pollutant at 200 of the 1,294 locations designated by the federal government as toxic Superfund sites."

There has not been any agreement on the specific level of this toxin to be permitted, even though it has been a known problem for many years, but now the EPA is working harder to define some rules for its regulation.
If you remember from a previous post about West Virginia's mountaintop removal (Acid Mine Drainage), you would know there are harmful effects from the blasting, but selenium was also a problem in the area. Iti is a naturally occurring element and is used to anaerobic environments with no oxygen, and if disturbed by blasting, mining, farming, or burning coal, it can be released into the environment. This isn't just bad for your drinking water and stomach, but can cause numbness in extremities of humans. You can imagine that for birds and fish of smaller body proportions, they will be affected much more severely.

Selenium was found in birds and other animals in the Kesterson Reservoir of California.