Since the 1980s, a sprawling mountaintop removal mining complex in southern West Virginia has been leaching pollutants -- such as selenium -- into nearby streams at levels deemed unsafe for aquatic life.
Since the 1980s, a sprawling mountaintop removal mining complex in southern West Virginia has been leaching pollutants -- such as selenium -- into nearby streams at levels deemed unsafe for aquatic life.
Now, even though the mine is closed, researchers have also found high concentrations of selenium in stream insects when they fly out of the water and the spiders that eat them along the banks, an indication that the contaminant moves from water to land as it makes its way up the food chain.
The study shows how “a lot of stream contaminants get out of the water and defy gravity,” said co-author Emily Bernhardt, a biologist at Duke University who has been studying the impacts of mountaintop mining on the region for 10 years.
The researchers looked at 23 streams in the Mud River watershed, a network of creeks and streams meandering through the steep forested terrain in Lincoln County, West Virginia. The watershed also happens to drain the 9,900-acre Hobet 21 coal mine, one of the largest mountaintop removal mining operations in Appalachia.
Read more at Duke University
Image: Duke University researchers have found high levels of selenium in aquatic insects and the spiders that feed on them downstream from a major coal mining site in southern West Virginia. (Credit: Photo by Jacqueline Gerson, Duke University)
