Caribou Clean Water Partnership

SELENIUM KILLS CAMPAIGN

This campaign has a very blunt message that communicates the real danger of allowing additional selenium pollution to streams and aquifers near phosphate mines. Our current billboard tells the message from the perspective of a six year old. If children can understand that they must clean up the messes they make, then phosphate companies should be able to get it.

Kid SIgn

Selenium kills fish

The fish ad focuses on the danger to native cutthroat trout and other aquatic life. Acceptable aquatic limits for selenium are 5 parts per billion. Several streams and aquifers downstream and near mines are polluted above this limit.

Dr. Rob Van Kirk, of Idaho State University, has done peer reviewed and published research that calculates the long term effects of selenium pollution. If not reversed, trout populations in some streams could be reduced by up to 90%.

"Our model shows that selenium concentrations in the Blackfoot and Salt River watersheds are high enough to cause observable declines in cutthroat trout populations in some streams. Selenium concentration has essentially eliminated trout from East Mill Creek... and other populations we have not monitored may have already declined." --Dr. Van Kirk
For more information on this study, click here.

Selenium kills livestock

The sheep ad focuses on the danger to livestock. Over 600 documented livestock deaths in eastern Idaho have been attributed to selenium poisoning. Livestock are affected by drinking polluted water and eating vegetation contaminated with high concentrations of selenium. So far horses, cattle and sheep have been poisoned. The photo above is a dead sheep that was grazing near a phosphate mine.

Selenium is a dangerous toxin. There are as many as phosphate 28 mines in eastern Idaho that are polluting eastern Idaho and western Wyoming with selenium. To date, not one single mine has ever been successfully cleaned up. Seventeen of the mines are now federal superfund sites. Yet, the Forest Service and the BLM continue to permit and allow for more mines and additional pollution.

To do something about this, JOIN THE PARTNERSHIP and help us spread this message.