Next to a national wildlife refuge, Indiana’s Gibson Lake provides a prime fishery for bass and an attractive rest spot for hundreds of species of birds, including endangered least terns.

But the manmade lake, built by one of the world’s largest coal-fired power plants to hold its wastewater, contains high levels of selenium that jeopardize the birds and rendered fish unsafe to eat.

Selenium is an essential nutrient, but in wildlife and people excess amounts can be dangerous. Now the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is preparing a new regulation that would require more than 600 coal-fired power plants to clean up—perhaps even eliminate—wastewater discharged into lakes, rivers and other waterways.

The new national standards, scheduled to be unveiled in 2012, will replace a patchwork of state regulations that EPA officials say are too lax to protect fish and wildlife from toxic metals and other elements, particularly selenium, in the power plants’ wastewater. Some states allow the plants to emit selenium at levels hundreds of times higher than EPA’s water-quality standards, while others don’t even require monitoring for it.

High selenium levels can deform or kill fish and birds, sometimes even wiping out species.

“For selenium, that boundary between … the optimum amount that you actually need and stepping over that line to toxicity is just a knife edge,” said Marjorie Brooks, an assistant professor in the zoology department at the University of Southern Illinois and co-editor of an upcoming book about selenium in aquatic environments. “We do need to be really vigilant about how much is there and how much is leaching into the system.”

Power plants that burn coal require large volumes of water for their cooling towers so they are typically situated close to lakes and rivers, said C. Richard Bozek, director of environmental policy at the Edison Electric Institute, a trade association of shareholder-owned electric companies.

The EPA has regulated the industry’s wastewater since 1982 for other contaminants, but regulation of selenium and metals has been left to individual states.
 
In September, after studying some coal-fired power plants, the EPA concluded that “current regulations have not kept pace with changes that have occurred in the electric power industry over the last three decades.”

The study “revealed significant concerns around metals from discharge from these power plants,” said Mary Smith, director of the engineering and analysis division of the EPA’s Office of Water.

Duke Energy’s Gibson Generating Station is one of many plants that have drawn the attention of environmental agencies. Rather than rely on the nearby Wabash River for its plant, which serves Indianapolis and nearby areas, Duke Energy constructed a 3,000-acre lake in the 1970s to use as a cooling pond and to store its waste. The lake was closed to fishing in 2007 because selenium concentrations in the fish exceeded levels safe for subsistence fishing.

4 Comments

1. 1. Frosty46 08:04 PM 12/4/09

   Very fine article, well documented and researched, thank you!

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2. 2. dwbd 11:50 PM 12/4/09

   Just another example of how King Coal gets a free ride from Environmental Regulations, while Nuclear can't even release a thimble full of mildly radioactive material without the NRC breathing down their neck.
   
   It sure pays to stuff politician's pockets with those Coal, NG & Oil dollars.
   
   If we are to survive, if this Earth is to be protected, this double standard must be eliminated.

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3. 3. JamesDavis 06:44 AM 12/5/09

   West Virginia said that they get 98% of their power from coal burning power plants, just watch their commericals, and the other 2% from the burning of natural gas and West Virginia did away with all the EPA regualtions, so they do not worry about the billions of tons of toxins they put into the air, water, and land. Selenum, Boron, and Mercury 2+ is so heavy in the water that it deforms the animals, fish, birds, and humans beyond recognition, and 68% of the children are so severly mentally retarted from the lead and mercury 2+ that you can hardly recognize them as humans. All the people who played in the movie "The Hills Have Eyes" are actual people, without any special effects or makeup, from West Virginia. When the movie producer came back to West Virginia last year to get more children for the sequals, Governor Manchin got really upset that we didn't have enough children prepared yet for the sequals. The governor said, "We need the jobs!" West Virginia should have enough children for the sequals within a couple more years.
   
   You should move all those coal and natural gas burning power plants to West Virginia...go ahead and bring all your nuclear waste to, because West Virginia need the jobs and they do not worry about all those pesky old EPA regualtions.

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4. 4. treehugger2 08:42 PM 12/5/09

   So they did a medical study showing people with 130-150ppb selenium in their blood were more susseptable to diabetes , see story listed lower right. So do we have a much larger occurance of diabetes in the Homer City area of Pennsylvania? Homer City emitts up to 320 times EPA limit (5ppm)
   Doc what do you think?
   
   Has the federal government made recommendations to protect human health?
   The EPA restricts the amount of selenium allowed in public water supplies to 50 parts total selenium per billion parts of water (50 ppb).
   
   The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) sets a limit of 0.2 mg selenium/m3 of workroom air for an 8-hour work shift.
   
   ATSDR and the EPA have determined that 5 micrograms of selenium per kilogram of body weight taken daily would not be expected to cause any adverse health effects over a lifetime of such intake.
   
   top
   References
   Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR). 2003. Toxicological Profile for Selenium. Atlanta, GA: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service.
   

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