The State - News from Sept. 30, 1987

The possibility of more Kesterson-type wildlife disasters in the San Joaquin Valley was raised in a federal-state environmental draft report issued in Fresno. “Evidence is mounting that fish and wildlife using some of the evaporation basins, wetlands, and streams elsewhere in the San Joaquin Valley may suffer a similar fate,” the report said. Hundreds of thousands of birds at the Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge, 30 miles west of Merced, died in 1983 and 1984 because selenium in farm waste water ponded in the refuge got into the wildlife food chain. The study suggested the idling of lands, restoration of wildlife habitat, public parks, and the establishment of regional water control agencies as measures to avoid similar disasters.