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Poison
is blowing eastward from
Nevada,
and Utah is in its path.
Mercury is floating out of smokestacks into the atmosphere from a
cluster of gold mines near Elko that account for as much as 11 percent of
the nation's total mercury emissions. Utah's mountain high country, its
urban heart and the irreplaceable ecology of the Great Salt Lake are
directly downwind.
Named for the Roman god of commerce, profit and thievery whose winged
shoes sped him as the gods' messenger, mercury is a heavy metal that can
foul the environment. Mercury exposure has been linked to neurological and
kidney disease, loss of motor control and death. Pregnant women and young
children especially are at risk.
Federal researchers estimate that more than 300,000 newborns each year
may have an increased risk of learning disabilities associated with
prenatal exposure to organic mercury that their mothers ingest from fish
and shellfish. University of Texas epidemiologists have linked increasing
incidences of childhood autism to mercury.
It is considered such a threat to human health that Congress ordered
the Environmental Protection Agency to make rules to cut mercury coming
from coal-fired power plants, the main source of global atmospheric
mercury. Yet the Nevada mines are under no such state or federal
regulations.
Rather, the four largest mining companies have entered into a voluntary
mercury emissions reduction program crafted with EPA's Region 9 office in
San Francisco.
The program's results have been mixed.
"This voluntary program has resulted in some emissions reductions. But
they could stop complying anytime they want," said Idaho Conservation
League spokesman Justin Hayes. "Mercury is such a powerful neurotoxin, you
want this stuff controlled to the maximal point possible, not to the
levels the gold mining industry wants to."
The Conservation League is ready to sue the EPA to force it to impose
emissions reductions rules on the Nevada mines. In an Oct. 21 letter to
then-EPA Administrator and former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, the Conversation
League charged that prevailing winds and atmospheric circulation patterns
send huge plumes of mercury into southern Idaho, possibly contributing to
mercury-related fish consumption advisories.
And what goes for Idaho ought to go for Utah, Hayes said. "It's
probably time for the state of
Utah
to pull its head out of the sand," he said. "There's no safe level of
mercury in your environment."
Up the food chain: In that case, says Salt Lake City environmental
activist Ivan Weber, Utah again is a guinea pig much as it was during Cold
War atomic tests in Nevada that sent fallout eastward.
"Salt Lake City's
burgeoning, youth-weighted population may be the real canary in this mine,
along with the birds of the Great Salt Lake extended migratory ecosystem,"
he said.
Glenn Miller, a professor of natural resources and environmental
science at the
University of
Nevada,
Reno, is a Great Basin Mine Watch board member and an expert on
Nevada
gold mines and mercury. In a March report prepared for the EPA that uses
1998 emissions reports and extrapolates backward to 1985, Miller estimated
the 18 Nevada gold mines released between 70 and 200 tons of
mercury.
That's probably an underestimate, he said, because several mines aren't
reporting atmospheric emissions. One reported producing about 120 tons of
byproduct mercury but zero emissions - which Miller says is a scientific
impossibility.
Scientists know that mercury can travel great distances. It's
understood that methylmercury, the element's organic form, can get into
the bodies of humans who eat fish and shellfish. Less clear is how else
mercury might be harming people, animals or the environment.
Research continues into whether mercury from amalgam dental fillings
contribute to Alzheimer's disease. Methylmercury from gold mining is being
blamed on the re-emergence in the Amazon of Minimata disease - named for
a Japanese fishing village where 1,500 people were poisoned in the 1950s.
Consumption of predatory fish high on the food chain such as swordfish
and shark is of particular concern in south and southeast Asia, Africa and
China. At the same time, California officials have issued warnings about
eating bass, catfish, bluegill, hitch, carp, trout and crayfish from
Sierra Range streams fouled by gold mining.
Merthymercury contamination "is potentially a major impact on the
recreational industry in Utah," Miller said. "You're going to be wondering
if you should eat the fish you catch."
"Urgent science": Federal scientists studying the Great Salt Lake have
reported finding some of the highest levels of mercury anywhere in the
nation. The lake is in a basin surrounded by mountains that act as a
collector for passing storms. Storms from the west generally pass over
northern Nevada, part of the larger area known as the Great Basin. The
water that lands in the basin is in turn evaporated and redeposited
nearby.
"A mercury cycle looks a great deal like the water cycle," said Weber,
a sustainable energy consultant. "Some mercury falls out near the source,
but not all of it. There's a distance of travel function we need to
understand. Those Nevada [mines] have suddenly made this urgent science."
Miller said that because mercury is drifting around the globe,
including huge amounts from China's coal-fired plants, it would be
difficult to determine exactly where the mercury in the Great Salt Lake,
or anywhere else, came from.
It's unlikely the mining industry is responsible for all the mercury in
Utah
and Idaho,
"but it is fair to say there is a significant fraction," he said. Still,
"I would be surprised if in the Uintas you didn't have some pretty
significant mercury loads."
If so, the state Department of Environmental Quality hasn't identified
them. Utah
has no mercury-related
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fish
consumption advisories. But that's because the state hasn't tested the
fish to see whether mercury is accumulating in their flesh.
Utah Division of Water Quality Director Walt Baker says the state is
still developing testing protocols for fish tissue and other freshwater
aquatic life, though a "limited number" of tissue samples have been sent
to EPA. One sample exceeded the level of what they would consider
acceptable, Baker said.
Miller believes Utah environmental regulators ought to be talking
seriously with their Nevada counterparts.
"In Nevada, the only place mercury falls is in Elko. But who's due east
of all the mercury releases? Salt Lake City," said Miller. "I would not
live downwind of one of those places. Utah needs to tell Nevada to get the
hell in gear. We need to go after the industry with both fists."
The Idaho Department of Environmental Quality estimates the northern
Nevada
mines may be responsible for up to 11 percent of all the nation's mercury
stack emissions. The EPA estimates the mines are responsible for 9.57
percent of the releases.
The EPA has compiled its annual compendium of hazardous air emissions
and their point sources, the Toxic Release Inventory, since 1987, but it
wasn't until 1998 that mine emissions were included. Suddenly,
Nevada zoomed to the top of
the mercury emissions list. The culprit? Relatively new cyanide and
thermal processing techniques used by a dozen or so gold mines, most of
them in the state's remote northeast.
"It's a huge issue. It caught everybody by surprise," said Dave Jones,
EPA Region 9 associate director of waste management.
A voluntary approach: Because there were no specific rules affecting
mercury emissions from mines, Jones said, EPA officials had to decide
whether to proceed with a regulatory process known as Maximum Achievable
Control Technology, or MACT.
But the process is cumbersome and has led to many lawsuits in other
instances, Jones said. So San Francisco-based Region 9 in 2001 decided to
try a voluntary approach: They asked cooperating mines either to put in
MACT-like controls or reduce their mercury emissions by 50 percent by July
of this year.
The first mine to participate was the Barrick Goldstrike, the largest
single gold mining complex in the nation. Barrick then helped convince the
Jerritt
Canyon, Newmont and
Cortez mines to come along, said Rich Haddock, Barrick's vice president
for environmental issues.
On paper, the mines have made progress. The numbers, however, are
inconsistent and confusing, because some are actual emissions as reported
to the EPA while others are calculated to show what the emissions could be
if the processors were running nonstop, Haddock said.
In 2001, the five mines collectively emitted 11,793 pounds of mercury,
or roughly 90 percent of all reported Nevada atmospheric releases. Jerritt
Canyon alone reported to the EPA a release of 7,990 pounds.
By 2003, their totals dropped to 4,446 pounds, largely due to reported
reductions from the Jerritt mine, whose emissions fell to 793 pounds.
By comparison, the average coal-fired plant emits 120 pounds of
mercury. Older plants in the eastern U.S. report 250 to 400 pounds of
mercury emissions.
The Nevada Division of Environmental Protection controls the mines'
permits, which are up for renewal this year. The state could include some
of the voluntary emissions control measures as conditions of the permits.
But those in the agency who spoke with The Tribune were
unfamiliar with some of the basic issues.
Colleen Cripps, chief of Nevada's air quality planning, didn't know how
the voluntary program started and said she didn't know what emissions
controls were in place. Mike Elges, Nevada's chief of air pollution
control, didn't know whether the state would take a regulatory stance to
further reduce the emissions. Elges said the state was assessing the
program's results, but said he wasn't convinced that the mercury emitted
from the mine's processors was the same type of mercury that comes out of
coal-fired plants.
Miller scoffed at that notion.
"There is no scientific basis for suggesting mercury coming off a
thermal process like a [gold ore] roaster or a power plant is going to be
significantly different," he said. "It's all going to be elemental
mercury, and that's the form that moves most quickly in the environment."
Mercury facts
l Mercury occurs naturally in the environment but also has been
introduced through human activity, particularly from coal-fired power
plants and mining.
l It is toxic even in small amounts. While most heavy metals are toxic
in the parts per billion, mercury is toxic in the parts per trillion.
l Methylmercury, the organic and most toxic form of the element,
collects in water, plants and animals. Predatory fish such as tuna,
salmon, swordfish and trout have been found to have high levels of mercury
in their tissues. Humans who eat mercury-laden fish, in turn, are tainted.
Fish
Advisory for Gunlock Reservoir in Washington County
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