The State - News from June 4, 1989

State and federal wildlife officials have warned some of the state’s biggest corporate farmers the government may file criminal charges if deadly selenium-laden irrigation waste water evaporation ponds in the southwestern San Joaquin Valley aren’t made safe for wildlife. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials said at a public hearing that the south valley ponds are accumulating the trace element selenium at levels far higher than the Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge 100 miles north in Merced County, where birds mutated and died the last few years. Kesterson was ordered closed in 1985 because of possible violations of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, a bird protection law that provides criminal sanctions for the killing of birds.