The Obama administration is apparently nearing completion of a proposal that would tighten the selenium discharges from coal-mining operations.
Release of a new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recommended water quality criteria for selenium is “imminent,” state Department of Environmental Protection officials said during a public water quality standards meeting this afternoon.
Some sort of EPA proposal has been in the works for years, but a Bush administration effort was widely criticized by scientists as weakening protections for aquatic life (See here and here).
Pat Campbell, a DEP water quality assistant director, said during today’s meeting that he has not seen specific numbers on what EPA will propose. But tighter limits on selenium have been among the measures the Obama administration has been considering as part of its crackdown on mountaintop removal.
Stay tuned …
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How can one single industry be singled out over and over by this administration. If you want to make a standard make it applicable to all industries. Is water contamination by timbering, construction, mining and residential not flowing into the same waters and affecting the same ecosystems? You want to clean up the streams the really clean them up and lets may the rules apply to all industry and to more than just one geographic location. How is the EPA allowed to get away with some of these tactics is a crime.
Steven do you have any evidence that these industries are causing selenium pollution?
My point is why not include them in case they do – why single out coal. There are rock quarries and construction sites that excavate rock and fill material similar to those used in coal mining. Same can be said for TDS limits proposed and how they can apply to any discharge into these same waters. Lets apply them to the gas industry and everyone else as well. I want clean streams as much as anyone – lets make these industries not only protect the ones we have but use the mitigation to clean up damaged streams and provide adequate sewage treatment to rural areas in need.
Steven-
At what point is coal mining being singled out? I have never read that. Is it because MTM is the single biggest source of Selenium? Yes quarries, road building, etc. can cause Selenium inputs, but the size and extent of MTM makes these other sources seem small.
You’re arguement is a bit like saying that the Nuclear Industry is being singled out because of all those restrictions on nuclear waste.
Centrum multivitamins contain selenium. How dangerous is selenium if the human body needs it? Yes too much of anything is bad, but selenium along with CO2. Ban all humans, then there will be no need for any mining. How much selenium is introduced to streams from natural erosion?
Where does that selenium come from?
Nowhere else in North America is earth moving happening at this intensity, at this scale. Not from agriculture, not from urban development, not even from natural erosion into the largest rivers on the continent, not the Colorado, not the Columbia, not the Missouri, not even the Yukon.
Earth moving in wyoming and the fort McMurrary area of canada dwarf the earth moving in appalachia
EPA is not singling out coal, it is trying to limit pollution from all sources that it has the authority to regulate. For example, it recently established new effluent limitation guidelines for the construction industry. The guidelines for the new rule, which became effective on February 1, are available here: http://www.epa.gov/guide/construction/
Had Congress not specifically exempted agricultural return flows from the definition of “point source” (which probably cause more pollution than coal mining does), EPA would likely be addressing that source as well.
As for timber practices, the pollution that results from that (sediment, etc.) is a nonpoint source as well, and can only be regulated through TMDLs if one is established for the receiving waterbody.
Scott 14 —
Could you post a link to some data to support your statement?
The peer-reviewed literature suggests you’re wrong … See this Coal Tattoo post:
http://blogs.wvgazette.com/coaltattoo/2010/04/02/new-epa-standards-is-this-only-about-coal/
The study is old, and perhaps outdated — I’m not aware of updated figures, but perhaps you are and could share them with the rest of us.
Ken.
LincolnWayne-
Selenium is a micronutrient. That means we need a very small amount on a daily basis. It goes from a nutient to a poison very quickly (400-800 micrograms per day in humans, much lower in smaller organisms). Your comparison of Selenium and CO2 is like me comparing it to water (if you drink too much you can get water toxicity-i.e., you dilute your bodily fluids to the point where your brain stops working right due electrolyte imbalance.
What Scott 14 may be trying to say is that there is a lot of earth moving occuring in the Powder River Basin for coal extraction. No one denies the amount of earth moving.
But the geology, topography and climate/rainfall are extemely different there than here. They do not have to use valley fills out there like we do here because of the generally flat terrain. In addition, the rainfall in the Powder River Basin is so small compared to the Appalachians. We wouldn’t have as big of a problem with WQ below MTM operations if we didn’t have the climate/rainfall that we have. But the reality is that the rainwater picks up the Selenium (and other pollutants) at the MTM sites. What EPA is trying to get the industry to do is change the way they do things (Minimize fills, leave some streams intact for dilution, etc.) so that the impacts (i.e., the amount of crap that is picked up by the water) is at a minimum.
Forget all the studys, what will be really, really interesting will be seeing the desperate machinations the WV DEP goes through to try to avoid having to do its job and enforce the selenium limits that are already on the books.
[...] that EPA publish tougher national water quality guidance for selenium, something that we’ve reported before here appears likely to be coming soon. Interestingly, West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Erica [...]