Great Salt Lake may get new selenium standard
At the International Conference on Salt Lake Research on Thursday, Utah Division of Water Quality director Walt Baker told an audience a numeric standard may be agreed upon by the state's Water Quality Board by September. Board members would then make a recommendation to the federal Environmental Protection Agency, which has a selenium standard for freshwater but not for saltwater environments.
"There is nothing alarming that has thus far come out of the studies," Baker said in an interview Thursday.
He said it hasn't become a human health issue but that the concern is as selenium bioaccumulates up the food chain it may become toxic by the time it reaches the lake's abundant bird population.
The public is invited to a meeting of the Great Salt Lake Selenium Steering Committee Tuesday at 6 p.m. in room 101 at the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, 168 N. 1950 West, Salt Lake City. The committee, which includes industry, government and environmental groups, will give a presentation before coming up with its own recommendation later this month.
"This is such a complex issue, but an important precedent is being made right now," advocacy group Friends of Great Salt Lake states on its Web site, www.fogsl.org. "We must show our support in the process."
Higher-than-normal levels of selenium and mercury have been found in the livers of shorebirds around the Great Salt Lake. A "dream team" of scientists targeting selenium can't be sure yet what the long-term ecological impacts could be and members are focusing their efforts for now on studying bird eggs and sensitive reproductive issues. In the future studies may turn to whether any deformities in birds can be linked to the mineral in the Great Salt Lake.
Selenium is found naturally in the environment, specifically water, which industry polluted in some places near the lake decades ago and has since been trying to clean up.
Enter Kennecott Utah Copper, which is ultimately responsible for two plumes of contaminated groundwater on the west side of the Salt Lake Valley. Cleanup was supposed to include using a reverse osmosis method of purifying water from one of the plumes.
The mere act of purifying, however, has been found to actually concentrate selenium in the so-called "reject" water before it is discharged. The reject water was proposed to be released into the Jordan River and nobody balked until water regulators asked in 2004 to rescind a permit request allowing the water to be pumped into the river, which flows north through the valley into the Great Salt Lake. That same year the selenium steering committee was formed.
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