How Canadian coal mines put unparalleled pollution in Montana-bound waterways
Lake Koocanusa. (The Western News/FILE)
The concentrations of selenium and nitrate entering the Elk River and Northwest Montana’s Kootenai watershed as a result of coal-mining operations in British Columbia are likely without measured precedent, according to a new study authored by U.S. Geological Survey scientists.
The mining-related growth of selenium, nitrate and sulfate concentrations in the Elk River, “are among the largest documented increases in the primary literature,” the researchers write.
Lead study author and USGS researcher Meryl Storb said her team perused all of the studies they could find on mining and solutes published in the past 40 years but couldn’t find anything “even close” to matching the trendlines in British Columbia’s Elk River, where selenium concentrations have grown sixfold and nitrate concentrations have grown by nearly 800% since 1979.
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