Selenium remains one of the least understood,
least regulated, of all toxic elements...
- Tom Harris, Death in the Marsh

It's a complex issue of epic proportions. Nearly 20 years ago, the State of Utah filed a Natural Resources Damage Claim (NRDC) against Kennecott Utah Copper (KUC), for groundwater contamination from mining activities. A settlement agreement was forged and in 1995, a Consent Decree was issued. The Decree includes a number of requirements that must be met over the next 40 years.

Among these requirements is that KUC must clean up two contaminated deep aquifers (ZoneA in Copperton and ZoneB in South Jordan). These are called the Affected Areas. The project must also provide municipal quality drinking water to the public in the Affected Areas. These areas fall within the jurisdiction of the Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District (JVWCD).

The contaminants consist of acids and high concentrations of total dissolved solids (TDS) which include sulfates and heavy metals. In Copperton, Zone A, where KUC would control operations, specific wells would extract the acidic water and slurry it directly to the tailings impoundment. Other wells would draw the sulfate tainted water and pump it to a treatment facility to undergo a filtering process called reverse osmosis. According to the numbers, JVWCD would be able to deliver approximately 3,500 acre feet of water each year to those residents.

In Zone B, South Jordan, operated by JVWCD, wells would pump the contaminated water to a treatment plant at JVWCD's headquarters. Here, instead of being slurried to the tailings impoundment (because of the cost), the concentrates of TDSs, which includes selenium(292 lbs/year) and (25,000 tons of salts annually) would be discharged directly into the Jordan River, eventually ending up in Farmington Bay.

Farmington Bay is a likely candidate to be designated an Important Bird Area by National Audubon because of its huge numbers of waterbirds.

Selenium bioaccumulates and causes reproductive dysfunction, birth defects and death. A painful example is the massive selenium contamination that occurred at the Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge in California during the 1980s.

The Division of Water Quality (DWQ) suggests that the sulfates and selenium would be 'mixed' at specific discharge points along the Jordan to keep the concentrations within the water quality standard. The success of the mixing is linked to a specific cubic feet/sec of water flow. But what happens during drought cycles when waterflow is low? And what happens when and if selenium begins to collect in the sediments of the wetlands?

The plan also includes compensating JVWCD for 'Lost Use' that would have otherwise come from the groundwater, now contaminated. For now, this will be achieved by drilling 5 wells into the shallow aquifer of the Jordan River. Long term plans call for nearly 100 wells. Nobody knows what effect pumping water from the shallow aquifer will be on the waterflows in the Jordan. Nor has there been much discussion about the additional concentrates that would come from that process, and how this combination would impact the wetlands along the Jordan.

On September 17th, FRIENDS filed a legal request with the Department of Environmental Quality to withdraw the Utah Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (UPDES) permit that was issued to JVWCD. The permit would allow the discharge of contaminants into the Jordan River from Zone B and from the shallow aquifer wells.

We did this because we have always advocated a watershed approach to the management of Great Salt Lake and its tributaries. And we have frequently expressed concerns over the increased loading of effluent in the tributaries of Great Salt Lake, as nearly all the effluent deposited in these tributaries will eventually run into the lake. And since we advocate a system wide approach, we believe that before any new authorizations for discharges into either the lake or its tributaries are approved, DWQ should take a step back to assess the past, present, and foreseeable impacts to Great Salt Lake and thereafter, develop a plan that incorporates enormous utility of the lake to the public. For in failing to take a sound ecological approach, DWQ fails to address some of the basic questions concerning the lake's ecology.

FRIENDS of Great Salt Lake believes that there are many questions that need answers before this plan can procede. The State, KUC and JVWCD should be able to guarantee the public that by cleaning up one source of contamination, they don't create another.

In saline,

Lynn de Freitas