FOURNIER: The truth about selenium is that activists won't tell you the truth

Today’s highly organized environmentalists believe that the ends justify the means. However to influence public sentiment, few of them have more succinctly stated their willingness to misapply scientific expertise and data than Greenpeace.As a case in point, Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace is infamous for saying: “It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.”Which brings me to the popular narrative that future metallurgical coal mining west of the Livingstone Mountain range in southwestern Alberta, represents a clear and present danger to the water quality in the South Saskatchewan River.It doesn't. .FOURNIER: Let's not fall for anti-mining propaganda.In my recent Western Standard article titled Let’s not fall for anti-mining propaganda, I noted that more than a thousand Canadian news stories over the last decade have made alarmist claims. They say that Rocky Mountain coal mining operations are destroying aquatic ecosystems, impacting terrestrial wildlife and livestock and threatening public drinking water supplies..But, the entire basis of this claim is laboratory studies — lab studies, not field observations — that suggest long-term adverse effects arise in various aquatic species, when exposed to elevated selenium concentrations. Selenium is a naturally occurring substance released from native minerals, found in the Kootenays and Rocky Mountains.These claims seldom admit that selenium is an essential nutrient for most terrestrial species. It is, in fact, used in human nutrition and mineral supplements for livestock. This is crucial context.Further, there are significant differences between data from laboratory studies and the regulatory guidelines upon which they are based, and how selenium behaves in the real world..To help tell this story, I will draw on our extensive environmental knowledge obtained after decades of environmental research on the Athabasca River ecosystem in northeastern Alberta. The Athabasca receives a massive influx of naturally-occurring selenium. To date, there is no evidence of adverse chronic effects in any aquatic species within the affected area.After thousands of years of erosion, the Athabasca River has cut through into a geological formation called the Prairie Evaporates. As the chart below shows, the Prairie Evaporate formation makes up the bottom of the Athabasca River between Fort McMurray and Old Fort, Alberta..According to Birks et al, the brine in this formation contains selenium with average concentrations varying between 400 and 600% higher than its Alberta Water Quality Guidelines.The Prairie Evaporates formation is the remnant of a 385 million-year-old Middle Devonian era marine environment that over time evaporated, leaving behind a super-concentrated and extremely toxic brine, whose salinity varies between 10 to 20 times higher than natural ocean water.Note that if one were to place a gold fish directly into this brine, it would likely die within 5 minutes. This extreme acute toxicity is largely a function of the super salinity of this brine and less so due to it elevated concentrations of metals such as selenium.It is estimated that upwards of 600 million cubic meters per year of this ground water upwells into the Athabasca River..Putting this into perspective, the annual flow on the Athabasca River is estimated around 20 billion cubic meters per year. These brine upwelling zones exist throughout the Athabasca River valley downstream of Fort McMurray and numerous are adjacent to the large oil sands mining operations that exist within the valley. One of these upwelling zones is the La Saline Natural Area, which is an oxbow lake, immediately adjacent to Suncor’s Mildred Lake oil sands upgrader and mining operation on the west side of the river. Note that La Saline is a major annual stop-over point for migratory waterfowl, heading to and from the Canadian Arctic. La Saline is — by definition — a salt marsh ecosystem. Furthermore, there are no documented instances of selenium-related effects in either La Saline Lake or within the Athabasca River downstream of Fort McMurray, in spite of the massive natural influx of groundwater that has elevated selenium levels. Clearly, other physical and or biological factors are compensating for the massive influx of super saline, selenium-laden groundwater into this regional aquatic ecosystem. .Thus, the Athabasca River is a classic case of where the real world receiving environment ultimately determines if an elevated element or compound flowing into this environment, will produce a measurable negative response. Sadly, the media, environmental activists and NIMBYs don’t bother to investigate or educate the public about other ecosystems in Alberta that are also known to be exposed to naturally-elevated selenium concentrations. In much the same way, the relative risks of potential selenium discharges from future coal mining operations in southwestern Alberta will also be governed by a host of site-specific, real-world factors. Some of these factors are environmental in nature, while others will be due to engineering controls and how mines are designed and operated. Ultimately, as with the Athabasca region, there remains an absence of clear, hard evidence of real-world selenium ‘poisoning’ in aquatic ecosystems downstream of coal mining operations in British Columbia or Alberta. .Statements in the media regarding evidence of selenium-induced deformities in fish have been based on: Extrapolation from laboratory studiesHistorical studies from other regions (mostly, the USA) Conjecture. Some have even attributed observed deformities in some fish species caused by whirling disease (e.g., missing gill plate covers,) to elevated selenium; this latter connection, is not supported by any conclusive scientific studies. For a more in-depth review of the literature and on best practices emerging in Canada’s metallurgical coal mining industry, I encourage you to take the time to review the white paper entitled 'Effects of Selenium from Metallurgical Coal Mines in Western Canada – Distinguishing Fact from Fiction,' that my colleague Guy Gilron and I recently published.