Groups press Gov. Bullock to address selenium levels in local waters

Five coal mines operated by Teck Resources Ltd. on the Elk River in British Columbia are leaching selenium into Lake Koocanusa and the Kootenai River at levels that at times far exceed national standards.

Dave Hadden is executive director at Headwaters Montana, and his organization, along with Trout Unlimited, National Parks Conservation Unlimited and local businesses, have in the last month placed paid advertising into local newspapers to call on Gov. Steve Bullock to take further action to address selenium poisoning.

“We’ve been working across the border on this issue for 17 years,” Hadden said. “And now we’re asking Bullock to acknowledge that this issue is too big for B.C and Montana to handle on their own. We’re asking our government to use the Boundary Waters Treaty, created in 1909 to settle disputes about waters bordering the U.S. and Canada, to resolve this.”

Coal mining leaves huge amounts of rock in rubble, releasing selenium which has naturally built up in the rock over millennia, said Mike Hensler, fisheries biologist with Fish, Wildlife and Parks in Libby.

“It’s exposed by the process of mining, and once exposed to air, rain and high water, it has nowhere to go but downstream,” he said. “Once it’s in the water, that’s it.”

High levels of selenium are associated with reproductive abnormalities in fish, birds and humans, Hensler said.

“Selenium is a mineral humans need, in tiny quantities,” he said. “We can metabolize it, so it’s not like heavy metals which are in our bodies for good. But while we don’t know a lot about what really high levels can do, we do know it affects mostly our reproductive functions, causing infertility and birth abnormalities.”

In terms of the effects of selenium poisoning in area watersheds, Hensler said although his team continues to sample every fish they can, he hopes his organization will receive more funding for testing and research, because there is so much they don’t yet know.

“What we know for sure is that levels of selenium are much higher in burbot (a fish also known as ling) in the Lake Koocanusa and Kootenai drainages than in other, similar drainages,” Hensler said.

Reproduction in burbot has also decreased dramatically in recent years, Hensler said, but it is unknown if the decrease is linked to high levels of selenium.

“It could also be to do with reservoir levels,” he explained. “Burbot spawn in January and February, which is when the reservoir is lowest, so the decrease in population could be associated with that as well.”

Deciding what a safe level of selenium in water bodies is an “ongoing process between the two governments,” Hensler said.

“Montana standards currently specify two micrograms of selenium per liter of water at the border,” Hadden said. “But levels in the Elk River have been recorded at 130 micrograms per liter.”

Mike Rooney, Libby-area president of Trout Unlimited, presented at the July 26 County Commission meeting to raise concern over selenium levels in local waters.

“I fish the Elk river, and I’ve caught fish I thought were damaged by hooking,” Rooney said July 27. “But when I saw pictures of selenium deformities in fish I realize that’s what I saw.”

A reluctant activist on the issue, Rooney said it was hard for him to weigh it all up.

“There are 4,500 jobs out of those mines in B.C.,” Rooney said. “And I know how environmentalists can damage an economy. We’ve seen it with natural resources here in Lincoln County with timber.”

Rooney said what caused him to take the issue on in recent years has been a mixture of personal experience and that “it was informational there for awhile, now it’s factual, we’ve got data and concentrations of selenium are rising.”

Rooney experienced fishing on the Elk River last year after Teck resources experienced a huge runoff problem.

“You could fish,” Rooney said wryly, “but the river was brown. Teck worked hard to stop the flow, but it was weeks before it was over. The fly fishing guides could do nothing but stand on a corner and practice casting.”

After working for major oil companies throughout his career, Rooney believes mining can be done right, too, with little or no negative effect on the environment.

“There are lots of ways to do it right, It’s just that they’re all expensive,” Rooney said.

Rooney’s next step will be working with the Kootenai River Network to mobilize local interest groups and report to the county commissioners on the issue.

Some of the expensive tcehnologies Rooney alludes to have been tested at the Elk River mines.Although Teck Resources has poured $100 million into an experimental water treatment plant at one of the mines, Hadden said, the plant was halted earlier this year because “it turns out it was actually making the problem worse and releasing a more bioavailable form of selenium into the river.”

“There might be ways Teck can solve the problem with the water treatment plant, and they are working on it,” Hadden said. “But this is a 1000 year problem. Even if Teck are able to make the water treatment work, they will need to outfit four other mines at a cost of $100 million per mine, and run those plants indefinitely, even after the mines are closed and the flow of revenue halted.”