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Tr-Ash Talk: Simplot's Fish Story


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Tr-Ash Talk: Simplot's Fish Story

Two-headed fish, selenium, mining and coal ash
Two-headed trout from selenium-impacted stream. Photo from J.R. Simplot Company Study.

Truth is stranger than fiction.

The J.R. Simplot Company, owner of several phosphate mines in Idaho, is asking federal and state regulators to relax water quality standards and permit more selenium in Idaho streams than the law currently allows.  The reason: Simplot, one of the largest privately held companies in the world, doesn’t want to clean up creeks polluted with selenium from its mining operations in the Caribou National Forest.  As part of Simplot’s campaign to avoid expensive Superfund cleanups, the company conducted a study of the fish impacted by selenium near its Smoky Canyon Mine to demonstrate that a little more selenium is not such a bad thing.

The rub is that selenium is a deadly, bioaccumulative poison in small doses, which has caused widespread devastation of fisheries from California to North Carolina.  The principle sources of selenium contamination in U.S. waters are agricultural runoff, phosphate mining and, yes, coal ash.
 

In its zeal to avoid spending millions on clean up, Simplot comes close to arguing that two heads are better than one.  Selenium pollution, caused by Simplot’s mining, resulted in fish deformities including the two-headed trout (pictured).  Despite the obvious harm to aquatic life caused by the high selenium levels, Simplot argues that these fish can live with more.

But the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) vehemently disagreed and found Simplot’s research “highly questionable” and riddled with “confounded data.” In a critique of the 1,200-page Simplot report, FWS scientists found “significant flaws,” including failing to account for impacts on other wildlife and undercounting deformities, which include deformities of the eye, jaw, fin and spine.  The FWS found that the increases in selenium requested by Simplot “would result in serious harm to fish and wildlife if implemented.” In sum, the FWS stated that the increased selenium would essentially sanction a deformity rate as high as 70 percent for fish in the affected creeks. 

The relevance to coal ash?  Selenium is one of the most common coal ash contaminants found near coal ash dumps- frequently at levels higher than those measured in the Idaho stream that spawned the two-headed fish.  Selenium from coal ash has caused fish kills, sterility, deformities, and launched fish advisories in waterbodies in Indiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and Texas, to name a few.

The takeaway is that industries are exceedingly bad at policing themselves and at recommending solutions to problems they’ve created, especially when those problems are expensive to fix. Remember the testimony in a 2010 Congressional hearing from a physician and utility consultant who stated that coal ash can be sprinkled on our cereal?  The utility industry, like J.R. Simplot, is also asking for a relaxation of federal standards (S.1751), even while more and more contamination from coal ash is discovered nationwide threatening our health and environment. 

The role of science absolutely is critical in Idaho, as it is in the coal ash debate.  When industry seeks to regulate itself, it can be a freak show.

For more information, check out these links:

Deformity study - Additional photos of deformed fish can be found in Proposed Site-Specific Selenium Criterion, Sage and Crow Creeks, Idaho, January 2012. Prepared for J.R. Simplot Company by: Formation Environmental, LLC and HabiTech, Inc. Submitted by J.R. Simplot Co. to Idaho Department of Environmental Quality on January 30, 2012. Appendix C of Appendix D.

Selenium Impacts on Fish: An Insidious Time Bomb, A Dennis Lemly, USFS, Human and Ecological Risk Assessment: Vol. 5, No. 6, pp. 1139–1151 (l999)

Greater Yellowstone Coalition, Phosphate Mining: Poisoning Lands, Waters, Wildlife
 

 

Submitted by kings5 (not verified) on February 28, 2012.

No too heads is not better then one because now that fish is full of poison that stuff is probably like this stuff polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB's) and then i don't think that coal ash is that bad because i grow plants in ashes and they grow as if they were in dirt or planting soil
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Last updated on Wednesday, January 04, 2012

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on February 25, 2012.

Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable! I grew up in the 60s & 70s and it seemed the world as a whole was interested in restoring our environment. To make things healthier for the earth and for us. I guess it was just a dream and money is still more important than being green. Funny that money is green. Did they get the two mixed up in their heads?

Submitted by kings5 (not verified) on February 29, 2012.

i believe it because they do it all the time no matter what because they can buy their way out

Submitted by RJS (not verified) on February 23, 2012.

Two heads R better than one. Would they still feel that way when it begins to happen to children and grandchildren?

Why is no-one using their God given talent to reason? Where has common sense gone?

UN-F-believable stuff here. I just cannot believe where this world is going and the rediculous thought processes that put us there.

Just yesterday my second dental apt. was taken from me because I would not put a check mark next to a line that read this:
_ I refuse to give my consent for the proposed treatment(s) described above.

I refused absolutely NOTHING nor would I say I did. So they pulled my next apt. just for not checking that box. I don't even think they knew what it said or implications of non-compliance it presented.

Bottom line, this world is screwed and coming to an end and it is MAN that will be the sole cause. PERIOD!

I just do not think we 'as a whole unit' were given the powerful abuility to 'THINK' for the purpose of our demise, yet that is all we seem to use it for .. Good-bye innocent earth, I will truly miss you when your gone, I tried hard to live a life that would go easy on you. My attempts include going as far as to share 1/2 of my home with exotic birds that for reasons 1 or the other left them in postion for rescue. I try to make repairs. I do not take from your forests, I povide for the victims that have been. I am sorry for what man has done to you - YOU. My mother EARTH. I'm so sorry...

*******************************************************************************************************

A whole page full of examples right here in my home town. http://webpages.charter.net/rjsworld/lnchscnr.htm
everything from police calls answered by our dispatch with 'wuddup' to domestic abusers given a ride home rather thn jail or a drunk falling in the street but the officer didn't want to check on him and didn't, child neglect ignored by law enforcement. Here that actual radio calls.

Submitted by Yanith olivares (not verified) on February 22, 2012.

I would understand their point, only if their sons have two heads

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