Jim Gibbons Helps Poison Utah with Mercury

Aha! Now we know why Gibbons was so hot to help the Bush-run EPA weaken regulations for Mercury emssions. He's helping huge foreign Gold cartels to poison Utahns!

Mercury filled smoke spewing from the stacks of Elko goldmines is poisoning Northern Utah and the Great Salt Lake according to a local television station in Salt Lake and the Salt Lake Tribune.

(Update: the Trib link is dead, to read the story try here (pdf) or here)

From the Tribune piece by Patty Henetz:

Poison is blowing eastward from Nevada, and Utah is in its path.

Mercury is floating out of smokestacks into the atmosphere from a cluster of gold mines near Elko that account for as much as 11 percent of the nation's total mercury emissions. Utah's mountain high country, its urban heart and the irreplaceable ecology of the Great Salt Lake are directly downwind.

According to the article, some Nevada Mines have imposed voluntary restrictions to Mercury emissions,  but the resullts have been mixed, and there exist no federal or state rules controlling them. So, the mines could ignore the restrictions anytime they want.

You won't see any effort from Congressman Jim Gibbons to clean up the mess.  Gibbons co-authored a  report with House Resources Committee chair Richard Pombo which used bad science to down-play the dangers of Mercury emissions from power plants.  The Bush EPA used the report to set weak restrictions on such emissions'

Now, however, we see why Gibbons had such an incentive to mislead the American people about the dangers of mercury emissions.  He's protecting the guys who fund his campaigns: the Big International Gold Mining Cartels.

I can tell you how much these guys gave Gibbons for his last campaign. But the only people who know how much they're giving to his race for Governor right now are members of the top secret society "Friends of Jim Gibbons." The arcane campaign finance laws of Nevada allow this clandestine cabal to raise funds secretly.  They are required to make only one report annually. That'll be out next January, folks.

However, here are the list of contributions from Big Mining to Gibbons' 2004 campaign:

Anglogold Ltd $1,000
Arch Coal  $2,000
Barrick Goldstrike Mines $10,000
Brush Wellman  $1,000
Foundation Coal $4,000
Hecla Mining $500
Kennecott Holdings $3,000
Kerr-McGee Corp  $1,500
National Mining Assn  $2,500
National Mining Assn  $3,159
Newmont Mining  $6,000
Peabody Energy  $2,000
Phelps Dodge Corp $2,000

And the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection is, apparently, an oxymoron. It seems that the people in charge of the agency are out of the loop completely:

The Nevada Division of Environmental Protection controls the mines' permits, which are up for renewal this year. The state could include some of the voluntary emissions control measures as conditions of the permits. But those in the agency who spoke with The Tribune were unfamiliar with some of the basic issues.
   Colleen Cripps, chief of Nevada's air quality planning, didn't know how the voluntary program started and said she didn't know what emissions controls were in place. Mike Elges, Nevada's chief of air pollution control, didn't know whether the state would take a regulatory stance to further reduce the emissions. Elges said the state was assessing the program's results, but said he wasn't convinced that   the mercury emitted from the mine's processors was the same type of mercury that comes out of coal-fired plants.
   Miller scoffed at that notion.
   "There is no scientific basis for suggesting mercury coming off a thermal process like a [gold ore] roaster or a power plant is going to be significantly different," he said. "It's all going to be elemental mercury, and that's the form that moves most quickly in the environment."

Miller is a professor of environmental science at UNR.  The Tribune article had this to say about him:

Glenn Miller, a professor of natural resources and environmental science at the University of Nevada, Reno, is a Great Basin Mine Watch board member and an expert on Nevada gold mines and mercury. In a March report prepared for the EPA that uses 1998 emissions reports and extrapolates backward to 1985, Miller estimated the 18 Nevada gold mines released between 70 and 200 tons of mercury.
   That's probably an underestimate, he said, because several mines aren't reporting atmospheric emissions. One reported producing about 120 tons of byproduct mercury but zero emissions - which Miller says is a scientific impossibility.

So, here's our choice: die of Mercury poisoning or VOTE GIBBONS OUT!