 |
| Wildsight photo by Garth Lenz |
After long-developing documentation of high levels of selenium, a bi-product of mining in British Columbia’s Elk Valley, and the failure of a water treatment plant to curb the problem, the state of Montana and tribal governments are weighing in on the matter.
Montana Governor Steve Bullock and Senator Jon Tester, both Democrats, recently urged Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to take action with the Canadian government to address coal mining pollution that flows into the United States through Lake Koocanusa and the Kootenai River drainage. That raises the potential for the issue to become part of an upcoming renegotiation of the Columbia River Treaty.
Montana is not alone in challenging British Columbia’s approach to regulating mining practices; Alaska’s governor and entire Republican congressional delegation have sought the State Department’s intervention because of similar conditions that have led to pollution flowing into Alaskan waters.
“It illustrates that BC is a problem for all of its neighbors” when it comes to regulating mining pollution, said Michael Jamison, Crown of the Continent program director for the National Parks Conservation Association. “We don’t trust the BC regulatory mechanism.”
That sentiment is apparent in the letter from Bullock and Tester, who are challenging the discharge of a pollutant called selenium from seven coal mining operations in the Elk River drainage, an upper Columbia Basin tributary that flows directly into the Kootenai River and Lake Koocanusa.
“The state of Montana determined that selenium is a critical pollutant of concern for which British Columbia and Montana do not have a formally adopted water quality standard/objective,” the letter states. “It is our belief that from a human health and aquatic life perspective, Lake Koocanusa is the most sensitive point in the Kootenai watershed affected by selenium. A strong bilateral water quality standard, developed with British Columbia, is the first step in communicating and protecting Montana’s water quality needs.”
Selenium has been shown to cause defects such as missing gill plates, curvature of the spine, and ultimately diminished reproductive ability in fish.
Baucus and Tester pointed out that it is commonly accepted that coal mining will continue to generate contaminants not limited to selenium in the Kootenai River watershed for generations to come.
“Given the international, multi-state, and tribal interests in this watershed we feel it is appropriate to identify federal resources to support long-term fish tissue and water quality monitoring in Montana and Idaho,” the letter states.
The Confederated Salish-Kootenai Tribes, the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho, and the Ktunaxa Nation of British Columbia say Montana’s position does not go far enough in getting the provincial government to seriously address mining pollution.
“The BC-MT process is limited to the Koocanusa Reservoir and exclusively focused on setting a site-specific water quality standard for one mine contaminant (selenium) in the reservoir,” a joint letter from the tribes to the State Department states. “While we support this process, it is limited and grossly insufficient, and we seek a separate, objective, federal-led, international agreement with enforceable, binding protections, financial assurances and a committed financial framework for assessing current conditions and future foreseeable impacts.”
Jamison and others contend that BC mining practices counter expensive fisheries restoration and conservation efforts undertaken in the U.S., in addition to loading waters flowing into the U.S. with so much pollutants that it can hinder American economic activity.
Jamison described Libby Dam, which created Lake Koocanusa, as a “treaty dam” under the Columbia River Treaty that has basically become a “tailings pond” that impounds pollutants flowing from Teck Resources mining operations in the Elk River watershed. That is a nexus that should make it a legitimate point of contention for the U.S. in the upcoming treaty renegotiation.
“One answer is to address this through the treaty modernization process,” said Jamison, who described Montana’s state-to-province efforts at addressing the issue as being ineffective.
“Right now we have the state and the province at the table when it should be more of an international problem. The Columbia River Treaty could elevate the issue.”
The BC provincial government has made an effort in improving Teck mining practices in the Elk River. In 2013, the provincial government ordered Teck to address selenium pollution, as well as other types of pollution including nitrate, calcite, cadmium and sulphate.
That resulted in Teck producing an Elk Valley Water Quality Plan that set targets for lowering selenium over 16 years, but Teck’s guideline for selenium were considerably higher than BC’s guideline, which is not a regulatory standard. The plan, along with promises to pursue a concerted effort at reducing pollution, resulted in the province permitting expansion of Teck mining operations in the Elk Valley.
Teck’s plan was a catalyst for the company building a $120 million water treatment plant to remove selenium near an Elk River tributary in 2014. But the plant ended up producing a more toxic form of selenium called selenite, resulting in the mortality of 74 westslope cutthroat trout in water near the plant. After three years, the province fined Teck $1,425,000 this October for the fish kill.
The company issued a statement saying it took full responsibility for the fish kill, which it believes was caused not by the more toxic form of selenium, but by high levels of nitrite, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide and phosphorus that were unintentionally discharged.
The Flathead Beacon reported on a recent audit conducted by BC Auditor General that chastised provincial mine regulators for “a decade of neglect in compliance and enforcement,” pointing to the mines upstream from Lake Koocanusa as being the most egregious examples.
“We found almost every one of our expectations for a robust compliance and enforcement program within the (Ministry of Energy and Mines) and the (Ministry of Environment) were not met,” wrote BC Auditor General Carol Bellringer in a report on the matter.
BC’s Ministry of Environment issued a statement last summer saying the water treatment plant “is removing the desired amount of selenium; however, Teck is still working to address the form of selenium at the end of the process.”
Jamison, along with researchers and conservationists, say U.S. waters will be burdened for centuries by mining pollutants from the Elk River drainage, and the time has come to end future mine permitting unless proven technologies and practices are assured, along with funding for water quality monitoring independent of mining interests is secured.