Wetland Considered Proving Ground for Toxics Cleanup Plan

Experts agree that toxic levels of selenium still threaten millions of ducks and other wildlife on the grassy wetlands in west Merced County four years after hundreds of deformed, dead and dying birds were found in the Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge, north of here.

But the governmental agencies responsible for protecting the environment and cleaning up what amounts to a massive toxic spill in the Kesterson area can’t agree on how best to remove the selenium, an element that is beneficial to life in trace amounts but highly toxic in even slightly higher concentrations.

The 5,900-acre refuge is owned by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and operated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Its marshy wetlands have been flooded by agricultural drain water from massive federal irrigation projects farther south in the San Joaquin Valley. The selenium-laden waste water, transported 70 miles north through the bureau’s San Luis Drain, formerly emptied into the 1,283 acre Kesterson Reservoir, a network of 12 shallow ponds within the refuge.

Refuge Closed

On Feb. 5, 1985, the state Water Resources Control Board ordered the refuge closed and gave the bureau three years to clean up the massive contamination. The bureau’s cleanup plan has been submitted to the board and a public hearing has been scheduled for Jan. 26 to air the growing controversy surrounding efforts to detoxify the refuge.

While government experts argue over Kesterson’s future, new evidence is being gathered indicating that the selenium problems there may only be the tip of the iceberg, the most visible example of widespread selenium problems that affect another 72,000 acres of wetlands used by 1.5 million ducks and 60,000 geese as a winter range in western Merced County.

‘Nesting Failure’ Found

Called the “Grasslands,” this area contains 160 private duck clubs, private livestock ranges and three additional state and federal wildlife refuges. These lands receive water from natural surface flows and the agricultural drain waters collected in canal systems by a dozen or more irrigation and water districts in the area.

Elevated levels of selenium are being found in aquatic insects and other basic elements of the wildlife food chain, a fact that wildlife scientists say has contributed significantly to “an almost total nesting failure” among tricolored blackbirds, a species found primarily in the Grassland area and now designated as a candidate for the endangered species list.

Only 100 fledgling blackbirds were observed by researchers who counted 266 dead chicks and estimated that 82,000 eggs and chicks were lost in 1986, according to the state Water Resources Control Board. A board staff report cited these figures as examples of how seriously selenium was affecting the area. “It is almost certain that the deaths were due to selenium toxicosis (poisoning),” the report concluded.

Because of such findings, the cleanup at Kesterson has taken on added significance. The work here is being considered a proving ground for both federal and state regulators responsible for protecting the environment.

The cost of cleaning up Kesterson could run as high as $24.6 million, if the bureau has to remove all the contaminated reeds, brush and other vegetation and scoop up half a million cubic yards of selenium-laden bottom sediments, a price that budget-conscious bureau managers are reluctant to pay.

‘Wet-Flex’ Plan

Instead, Kesterson cleanup director Susan Hoffman said the bureau is trying what it calls its “wet-flex” plan, a relatively cheap and simple cleanup method. If that method does not work, the bureau would proceed to more expensive and complicated methods. This phased approach--which could take up to five years--has been criticized by state and federal wildlife experts. The effectiveness of the untried plan is also being questioned by the state Water Resources Control Board’s staff.

The bureau has already begun implementing its plan by flooding eight of 12 Kesterson ponds with a layer of uncontaminated water that bureau experts say will “seal” the selenium into the muddy sediments. According to the environmental impact statement, this method “may prevent selenium . . . from moving into the ground water and wildlife food chains at unacceptable levels.”

The $3.8-million-a-year first step is based on continuing research by the University of California’s Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory that indicates the selenium in the flooded ponds will disappear from the wildlife food chain within one to five years. Bureau officials say selenium levels in wildlife are already dropping since the San Luis Drain was closed.

“Selenium, if you keep it wet and away from oxygen, will turn into its elemental form and be bound up on soil particles so that it will not be biologically available,” said chemist Oleh Weres, a Lawrence scientist.

Ponds Will Be Plowed Under

The remaining four ponds will be dried out and the vegetation will be plowed under to keep wildlife from feeding on it. These ponds will not be flooded because they have less selenium contamination and their sediment layers are more likely to leak selenium into underground waters, Hoffman said.

The bureau will monitor the Kesterson ecosystem closely to determine if the wet-flex plan is working, but the environmental impact statement acknowledges that until the selenium disappears, the risks for wildlife, including the rare tricolored blackbirds and the endangered kit fox, will continue to be “significant.”

Meanwhile, efforts to reduce wildlife exposure by a $13,000-a-month “hazing” program has only been partly successful, reports show. This program uses propane exploders that make a banging sound every few minutes, black plastic flags that flap noisily in the wind and workers--riding three-wheel all-terrain vehicles--who chase most of the birds away by shooting giant firecrackers over the ponds.

Some birds, such as the coot, remain on the ponds despite the hazing and studies show that selenium continues to cause reproduction problems.

The ‘Last Resort’

If the wet-flex plan does not work, the bureau would fall back on a $7.5-million-a-year second step that calls for removal of all contaminated vegetation and the flooding of even more clean water into the ponds.

The third step, the “last resort,” would be burial of a more than half a million cubic yards of contaminated sediments and vegetation in a hazardous waste dump to be constructed on the refuge. Cost: $24.6 million.

Because it is likely that wildlife would continue to be exposed to selenium long past the Feb. 5, 1988, deadline set by the state Water Resources Control Board, the first two steps of this plan are “unacceptable” to the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, operators of the refuge.

“We disagree with the science the bureau’s plan is based on,” said U.S. Fish and Wildlife spokesman Bill Meyer. Ideally, the service wants all selenium-contaminated sediments and vegetation removed from the reservoir and placed in a toxic waste dump. State wildlife and environmental experts agree that proceeding immediately to this procedure is the only way to complete the cleanup by the deadline.

Decision Due March 4

“The prospect of several more years of contamination of wildlife and their habitat is a risk we cannot endorse,” wrote Jack C. Parnell, director of the California Department of Fish and Game.

Final decision over the cleanup technique rests with the state Water Resources Control Board. After holding public hearings later this month, the board will decide at its March 4 meeting whether the bureau’s cleanup proposals are acceptable or should be modified or rejected. Whatever the decision, cleanup must be completed within 13 months, unless an extension is granted, according to staff attorney Silvia Vassey.

The likelihood of meeting that deadline is remote, most agree. And there is disagreement over cleanup standards, according to Hoffman, who said the state board order is too vague. “What does cleanup constitute, how clean is clean?” she asked.

Everyone now seems in agreement that the selenium problems are not confined to Kesterson. Last summer, a wildlife biologist warned in a state Fish and Game memo: “The entire Grasslands could become another Kesterson-type situation . . . all the circumstantial evidence is there. The only thing missing is the dead and/or deformed birds.”

Contamination Studied

Federal and state scientists are now trying to determine the extent of this contamination. High concentrations of selenium have been discovered in small mammals and insects that live in water. U.S. Fish and Wildlife spokesman Meyer added, “We have found levels of selenium in livers in aquatic birds at levels that caused deformed young in the nests of Kesterson birds.”

Nearly 3,600 samples have been taken from every part of the Grassland ecosystem and are now beings analyzed at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service research lab in Pautuxent, Md. Small, mouse-like voles have been found with high levels of selenium in their systems and, while these tiny creatures show no adverse effects, they are a staple in the diet of the endangered kit fox. A special kit fox study is under way to see if this nocturnal creature is being adversely affected.

As a result of the 1985 state board order, farmers on 42,000 acres in the Westlands Water District, 70 miles south of Kesterson, no longer empty the salty waste water from their soils into the San Luis Drain.

Naturally Occurring Salts

Eventually most farmlands on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley will feel the affect of the selenium problem. When desert lands are irrigated, the water passing through the soil picks up naturally occurring salts that must be drained away if farming is to continue. These salts contain toxic concentrations of boron and selenium in many areas of the valley.

The basic problem is that underlying the valley’s topsoils are a series of impervious clay barriers that create shallow underground basins. When irrigation water is applied, these basins are like giant planter boxes without drains. The brackish waste waters accumulate in the bottom, causing the water table to rise. If the salty water rises to the root zone, the crops die.

When the joint state-federal project was built, the San Luis Drain was to be the waste-water outlet to the sea, extending all the way from Kettleman City in Kern County north through to the San Joaquin Delta and San Francisco Bay. Kesterson Reservoir was designed as a basin to regulate the flow of waste water in the drain.

When environmentalists prevented extending the drain to the Delta, Kesterson Reservoir became the end of the drain, the sump. And the only part of the San Luis Drain built was the 70 miles linking Kesterson to the 600,000-acre Westlands Water District, in west Fresno County. The drain served only 53 farmers in a 42,000-acre section of the district, near the town of Mendota.

Bleak Future

With well-drained soils, the farmers could plant high-value vegetable and fruit crops. When the drain was closed, these farmers faced a bleak future.

“We face a do-or-die situation, we have to do something about the selenium or shut down the area,” said David L. Wooley, water manger for Murrietta Farms, a 9,600-acre farm that grows cotton, melons, alfalfa and other row crops. Without drains, he estimated that it will be several years before the contaminated water level rises enough to affect crop production on any of the area’s farms.

Murrietta Farms, in partnership with a chemical treatment firm, Binnie California Inc., has built a tiny selenium treatment plant on the ranch that is removing 98% of the selenium and boron from the water through a biological process that uses bacterial action to isolate the selenium. Westland Water District officials say the pilot project looks promising. Using the same process, Westlands is now financing construction of a $4.9-million plant that will treat 1 million gallons of water a day, Westlands spokesman Don Upton said.

In addition, the district has contracted with a firm to experiment with deep-well injection of selenium wastes, a project that will cost another $1.7 million. The waste waters would be pumped into strata 5,000 to 7,000 feet below the earth’s surface.

Westlands hopes to finance these projects through low-interest state loans that will be repaid either by water charges or land assessment, Upton said.

The hope is to find ways to remove enough selenium and boron from the waste water so that it can once more be exported out of the valley, without environmental harm, according to Upton.