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Vacated Mercury Mines Taint Calif. Waters
NEW IDRIA, Calif. - Abandoned mercury mines throughout central California's rugged coastal mountains are polluting the state's major waterways, rendering fish unsafe to eat and risking the health of at least 100,000 impoverished people.
AP graphic. But an Associated Press investigation found that the federal government has tried to clean up fewer than a dozen of the hundreds of mines - and most cleanups have failed to stem the contamination.
Although the mining ceased decades ago, records and interviews show the vast majority of sites have not even been studied to assess the pollution, let alone been touched.
While millions live in the affected delta region, the pollution disproportionately hurts the poor and immigrants who rely on local fish as part of their diet, according to a study conducted by University of California at Davis ecologist Fraser Shilling. His research found that 100,000 people, which he calls a conservative estimate, regularly eat tainted fish at levels deemed unsafe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
"Tens of thousands of subsistence anglers and their [families] are consuming greater than 10 times the U.S. EPA recommended dose of mercury, which puts them at immediate risk of neurological and other harm," Mr. Shilling said.
The legacy of more than a century of mercury mining in California - which produced more of the silvery metal than anywhere else in the nation - harms people and the environment in myriad ways.
Near a derelict mine in this California ghost town, the water bubbling in a stream runs Day-Glo orange and is devoid of life, carrying mercury toward a wildlife refuge and a popular fishing spot.
Other mercury mines are the biggest sources of the pollution in San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the largest estuary on the Pacific Coast.
Records and interviews show that federal regulators have conducted about 10 cleanups at major mercury mines with mixed results, while dozens of sites still foul the air, soil and water. The AP's review also found that the government is often loath to assume cleanup costs and risk litigation from a failed project.
Mercury from mine waste travels up the food chain through bacteria, which converts it to methylmercury - a potent toxin that can permanently damage the brain and nervous system, especially in fetuses and children.
The federal government calls methylmercury one of the nation's most serious hazardous-waste problems, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it is a possible carcinogen.
Mercury is considered most harmful to people when consumed in fish. People who regularly consume tainted fish are at risk of headaches, tingling, tremors and damage to the brain and nervous system, according to the CDC.
The toxin is less of a threat in drinking water, which is filtered and monitored more closely.
Mining in California ceased decades ago, leaving behind at least 550 mercury mines, though no one knows for sure how many. One U.S. Geological Survey scientist says the total may be as high as 2,000.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, California produced up to 90 percent of the mercury in the U.S., and more than 220 million pounds of quicksilver were shipped around the world for gold mining, military munitions and thermometers. Much of the liquid mercury was sent to Sierra Nevada gold mines, where miners spilled tons of it into streams and soil to extract the precious ore.
For the Elem Band of Pomo Indians, whose colony is next to Clear Lake, the most mercury-polluted lake in the world, the mercury has made it unsafe to eat local fish.
Their colony was built in 1970 by the federal government over waste from the mine. Officials knew it was contaminated, but were not aware at the time how dangerous mercury was to people. The mine is now a Superfund site.
State blood tests on 44 volunteer adult tribe members in the 1990s found elevated levels of mercury. The average level was three times higher than found in people who do not eat tainted fish, but regulators said only one man was at immediate risk of brain damage or other harm.
Yet the EPA determined that the tribe's mercury levels were a serious enough threat for the agency to spend millions of dollars removing contaminated dirt from the colony's homes and roads.
Many have moved from the colony, leaving about 60 of what was once a community of more than 200 people.
"We are here to protect the environment, and sometimes we do it better than other times," said Daniel Meer, EPA's assistant Superfund director for the region. "We can't start cleaning up everything all at once."
"It took a hundred years to occur," said Mr. Meer. "And it may take a hundred years or more to solve."
9 Comments so far
Show All"We are here to protect the environment, and sometimes we do it better than other times," said Daniel Meer, EPA's assistant Superfund director for the region. "We can't start cleaning up everything all at once."
"It took a hundred years to occur," said Mr. Meer. "And it may take a hundred years or more to solve."
Only someone who doesn't have to live in a contaminated dangerous place can say such things! You never hear rich people complain about their neighborhoods being contaminated by poisonous water, food or air. Why? Because they would never allow their community to be destroyed or poisoned. The only difference....rich people pay for elections and buy their politicians who then protect them.....poor people can't.
INSANITY RULES THIS COUNTRY
(welcome to "capitalism"...if you want to call it that)
While walking along downtown Vancouver a few days back I noticed a group of people Protesting against Mining Companies in El Salvador.
They were peoples of that Country, expatraites and the like wanting to end all mining in that country and had very much the same story to tell.
That of Multinational Mining Companies that come in, rip out the wealth of the nation, pollute its forests rivers and streams and then leave the mess for the people to deal with.
They have the same problems we all seem to have. These Corporations have all manner of money and influence and BUY the Political parties so as to get laws passed that favor them.
The Corporation is a cancer that grows out of control.
Capitalism, Corporatism, Facism. One leading to the other for the sake of Money.
Didn't notice any mention of the mine operators' responsibility in all this.
"leaving behind at least 550 mercury mines, though no one knows for sure how many. One U.S. Geological Survey scientist says the total may be as high as 2,000"
Weren't permits or some record filed for all these mines? The EPA, even under new direction, is still just a corporate whore like our whole government.
Just one more price that we will all pay for someone else's short-term profit. Some, like those unfortunate enough to actually ingest the stuff, will pay the most.
They'll suffer the most and possibly, if not probably or even certainly, from Minamata disease, which is a disease named after Minamata, Japan, where the extremely debilitating disease was first discovered. It was later discovered to be occuring to some Canadian First Nations Indians in, I believe, a part of western Ontario and (if also correctly recalling this) the next province over, heading west. The disease is caused from mercury poisoning and it was some manufacturing company(ies) in Japan, though I don't recall what kind of manufacturing. It was from lumber or pulp and paper industry pollution containing mercury when the condition occurred in Canada. There's a Wikipedia page on "Minamata disease" as well as plenty of online videos showing the extremely debilitating consequences of this poisoning with animals and humans. People in the likely affected areas of the U.S. should definitely make sure to carefully learn about this disease; it should help them to mobilize and strongly so. I saw a documentary, one hour long, I think, on probably CBC or maybe Canal D during one recent year and maybe this can be found online. It covered what happened in Japan and Canada, both.
In both countries, the affected populations got the poisoning from mercury-poisoned water; definitely including consumption of fish caught in these waters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamata_disease
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Minamata_disease
The following is a bit old, but nevertheless valid, and maybe there are more recent clips among the 17 TV and radio clips CBC provides in the following page obtained from the above Wikipedia page on the disease in Ontario, but while the CBC documentary also interviews the Japanese scientist or MD who had discovered the disease in Japan. The video clips may play weirdly, jumbled voices, though they're intelligble, just a jumbled mix-up though; but when I happened to click on or near the Pause and Go or Play button for the clip, the voice became as it should be.
http://archives.cbc.ca/environment/pollution/topics/1178
The voice is okay; it was in my Web browser that there was a little problem. I had the CBC archive page opened in two tabs, intending to use one for playing the clips, the first clip anyway, while using the other tab for only scrolling through the list of clips to see what they're each about. (I saw the full video documentary on TV, so I'm not in a rush to view and listen to these archived clips, but will get around to it, for it is an important topic; very.) The .WMV (Windows Media Video) clips start playing automatically in my browser and this is why the voice was inititally jumbled, mixed, say, for me; and the reason why the voice became as it should be after clicking Pause in one of the two tabs, which were both playing the same clip (until I clicked Pause). Ha ha; ooops.
The CBC clips span 32 years of history, 1970 to 2002, which I saw after making the first (above) post on the devastating consequences of this Minamata disease. And it covers a long distance in waterways. According to a clip I just listened to some of, two First Nations bands were (and probably remain, if they haven't relocated) badly affected in Ontario and maybe the next province over; unless they're both in Ontario. The band closest to the origin of the mercury pollution source lives in an area called Grassy Meadows, while the other band is the Ojibwe and they're 200 miles downstream.
200 miles of mercury-poisoned waters! All fishing had to be stopped, no more eating of any fish from these waters! And the poisoning surely didn't suddenly stop where the Ojibwe are or were.
Californians really need to learn about this and it's probably important for everyone else to also learn about this. Mercury poisoning is widespread. It's certainly in the oceans; plenty of ocean fishes being reported as containing high (enough) levels of mercury due to [our] polluting ways.
Great article. A bigger map, links to specific counties, urban areas, or watersheds would be nice.
Given the government's corrupt negligence in a case like this in California, it's a sick joke to bother thinking that the same government would care to ensure universal health care. A government that does [not] care about the population being poisoned with deadly mercury that could be cleaned up is going to care about the population's health? What a joke.
Oh, and we can add that it's the same government that refuses to provide the necessary health care for 9-11 first responders and other Americans poisoned from the extremely toxic pollution in the air in NYC or Manhattan due to the destruction of the WTC towers.
Such a government cares about providing universal health care, well, besides for politicians and other government employees, that is? How about some true realism, for a change?
The following is another page that turned up with my Web search using the title of the archived CBC documentary linked in my prior post in this CD page, and that documentary is linked in this following page, but it's about mercury poisoning in another way, which is through immunizations, vaccines.
http://www.hapihealth.com/books-and-video.html
Why put mercury in vaccines? We need some metals for our health, but mercury? Do they also put lead in vaccines? What is it, like government's (silent, but undeniably real) approval of tabacco corporations putting toxic chemicals in tobacco products, cigarettes anyway?
A week or two ago a client of mine had a pack of cigarettes purchased at a store and it was a brand I didn't know of, so I asked her what the list of ingredients said. She didn't need to read any more after saying 'formaldehyde', for I didn't need to know what the other listed ingredients were. Formaldehyde alone is very bad enough, imo. Do a Web search on "Formaldehyde is poisonous", quoted, and you'll get [plenty] of links.
There's no denying that the governments have to be aware of corporations doing this.
There's also no denying that the Canadian government is totally criminal (and rogue) when it comes to tobacco, for the government majorly raised taxes on tobacco consumers all while natural tobacco is [not] a real or serious health risk at all and the government has covered up the [fact] that the heads of the Big Tobaccie corporations should be spending perhaps the rest of their earthly lives in prison; after which they could of course be released to be buried or burned, somewhere. It's a criminal government-corporation cover-up and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent possible; both the corporate chiefs who were and remain guilty, and the government, BOTH should be prosecuted. The government shifted the blame to consumers and not the people responsible for putting toxic chemicals in corporate tobacco products; usually without saying what any of these were or are. People have consumed tobacco for ages without it being a health problem! Natural tobacco, that is.
And the same applies with many other crimes of our governments; cover-ups to protect politicians and corporate "chiefs", etcetera.
But the public is SILENT! Dumb sheep! We feebly allow political and corporate wolves to prey on our society (and other societies) as if it's not happening. Real sheep would try to run away to try to find safety, but not human sheep! Instead, we say, more, oh, oooh la-la, please give us more of that predation against us (and, esp., others); it feels so good and is so pleasant to see that you wolves must continue your predatory ways against us (and, esp., others around us and in other countries).
I'd like for real law, justice to happen, but it requires a strong popular movement to place enough pressure that the government and Justice Department (US) and Ministries (Canada, UK, etcetera) will act as they should and this sort of spirit is sparsely present in our populations. It is a disgarce to be such damn weak, spineless, complacent, etcetera, populations as we have. Revolutionaries, here? Where here? One locally, another midway across the country, one on each coast; now this does not constitute a revolutionary population or society! We're a devolutionary (degenerative) society; certainly not a revolutionary one. We need peaceful revolution, but it needs to be strong and firm; like the Hondurans have been demonstrating for now over 80 days straight, f.e. Now they have [spirit]. (And they're fortunate to not be in Palestine, else they'd be massively bombed ... months ago, already. Nevertheless, the Hondurans are a real example of the sort of revolution that's needed in (esp.) the US, but also Ca, UK, and so on. We also don't live in Palestine, so we need not fear being massively bombed in retaliation for peacefully firm and rightful, and constitutional, revolution.)
Revolution brings change. No revolution; no change, no improvement, no correction(s).
Political fraud is a crime, so when will we have laws against such acts; instead of only corporate and financial fraud? Once we get these laws established, then we'll need to work on making sure that they're applied in all cases of political fraud, but we first need to have the laws; else the courts will throw out pursuers as if they or we are just clowns who don't know what they or we are talking about. In our case, political fraud unfortunately is a serious crime; usually anyway. Very serious! And the legal ramifications should also be very serious for the perpetrators.
Instead, we have majority voters pretend that they're voting for the "lesser evil" all while being unable to competently prove the "lesser" part; the "evil" part being obvious.