# Presentation: 296484

## Selenium in Eastern Kentucky Streams: A Growing Environmental Concern

## Outline

**What is selenium?**
**How is selenium used?**
**How does selenium enter the environment?**
**What are the concerns about selenium entering the environment?**
**What is the national water-quality chronic criterion for selenium?**
**How much coal is produced in Eastern Kentucky?**
**What does the selenium data show?**
**What is being done in the Appalachian coal regions?**
**What is needed?**

## What is selenium?

**Naturally occurring trace element**
**Widely distributed in rocks and alkaline soils**
**Often not found in pure form in nature; usually combined with sulfide or with Ag, Cu, Pb, and Ni minerals**
**Essential micronutrient for humans and animals**
**Serves as an antioxidant**

## How is selenium used?

**Often used in electronic components and photocopiers**
**Other uses:  glass-making, rubber, paint pigments, metal alloys, photographic emulsions**
**Used in production of vitamins, dandruff shampoo, and dietary supplement for livestock**

## How does selenium enter the environment?

**Weathering of rocks and soil**
**Agricultural irrigation and industrial waste**
**Burning of coal and oil**
**Leaching from piles of overburden (gob piles)**

- Gob pile

- Photo from the U.S. Department of Interior
- Office of Surface Mining

## What are the concerns about selenium entering the environment? 

**Has a complex aquatic cycle**
**Bioaccumulative **
**Exposure is mainly through diet**
**Effects growth and survival of juvenile fish **
**Reproductive impairments in fish, birds, and wildlife**
**Can kill developing embryos or induce a variety of deformities in fish, birds, and wildlife**
**Biomagnification **
**Two- to six-fold from primary producers to forage fish**
**Risk to threatened and endangered species**
**Potentially effects 38 endangered species in Kentucky**
**Contamination of drinking water (toxic at high levels)**

- Photo from SeleniumWatch.org

**Notes:**
3 things can happen to dissolved Se when it enters the aquatic environment:
Can be absorbed or ingested by organisms
Bind with sediment
Remain free in solution
Over time, most Se is either taken up by organisms or bound to sediment.

Refers to how pollutants enter a food chain
Bioaccumlation:  increase in concentration of a pollutant from the environment to the first organism in a food chain

Refers to the tendency of pollutants to concentrate as they move from one trophic level to the next.
Biomag:increase in concentration of a pollutant from one link in a food chain to another

Biomagnification:
Arrows indicate the relative concentrations of selenium

## What is the national water-quality chronic criterion for selenium?

**Current chronic criterion (MCL) is 5 ppb in water**
**Established in 1987 by EPA**
**Disputed by biologists from USFWS and USGS (too high)**
**Studies in the 1980s showed adverse effects of high levels of Se on birds and fish**
**Proposed revision of aquatic-life criterion is 7.9 ppm dry weight on whole-body fish tissue**
**Based on fish tissue and not concentrations in water**
**Based on a study by Dennis Lemly (USFWS)**

**Notes:**
Current criteria established in 1987.
A dispute began shortly after EPA set this standard of 5 ppb.  Biologists from USFWS and USGS argued that the standard should be cut in half to protect birds and fish.  However, industries that discharge Se said that the standard was overprotective and burdened them with excessive compliance costs.

Push to lower limit in water and use the fish tissue criteria to complement the water criteria now in place.

## How much coal is produced in Eastern Kentucky?

**Coal production **
**1980:  104 million tons with 45 million tons from surface mining**
**2002:  124 million tons with 43 million tons from surface mining**

- Illustration from USGS
- Open-File Report 02-28

**Notes:**
Western Kentucky:
In 2002, 25 millions tons produced; 6 million from surface mining.

## What does the selenium data show?

**Kentucky Geological Survey; Information Circular 10; **
**Series XII, 2004**

## What is being done in the Appalachian coal regions?

**Mountaintop Mining/Valley Fill Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement was released in May 2003 (USACE, EPA, DOI-OSM, USFWS, WVDEP)**
**Improve agency programs that contribute to reducing adverse effects of mountaintop-mining operations in Appalachian coal regions**
**Minimize duplication of data collection and analysis**
**Compilation of USGS coal-hydrology data from 1980 for selected eastern KY streams**
**Report should be available on-line within the next 6-8 weeks**
**    ****(http://ky.water.usgs.gov)**

**Notes:**
Evaluate options for improving agency programs that contribute to reducing adverse effects of mountaintop-mining operations in Appalachian coal regions
One objective is to minimize duplication of data collection and analysis

## What other information is needed?

**Pre-mining assessments--determine Se conc. in coal and overburden before mining begins**
**Better understanding of selenium’s aquatic cycle in Appalachian coal regions**
**More water-quality monitoring (water, fish tissue, etc.)**
**Coordination of selenium research and mitigation programs in Appalachia between Federal, State and local agencies.**
**MORE water-quality monitoring**

## Questions?