Reprinted with permission of Forest Magazine

During the summer of 2003, the Durango Interagency Fire Dispatch Center took a call from Vallecito, a small resort community northeast of Durango and surrounded by the San Juan National Forest. Residents had spotted flames in the mountains above town.

“It put us in the mode of, ‘Here we go again; it’s going to come down the canyon and burn us out this time’,” says Jay Powell, a summer resident.

His fears were justified. The previous summer, the town had been evacuated for more than two weeks when the 70,000-acre Missionary Ridge Fire roared from Durango to Vallecito, burning dozens of homes to the ground.

But what the community saw as a threat, Allen Farnsworth, a San Juan fire-mitigation specialist, saw as an opportunity. From a reconnaissance flight the following day, Farnsworth spotted eight acres burning from a lightning strike six miles north of Vallecito Reservoir. The Bear Creek Fire was at 9,800 feet and inside the boundaries of the Weminuche Wilderness.

Unlike the destructive Missionary Ridge Fire, it had ignited at a higher elevation, in less flammable forests and at a time of lower fire danger. To Farnworth, the Bear Creek Fire looked like it could do some good in the high country without endangering Vallecito.

“Missionary Ridge had burned all the way around the community, so it was well buffered,” Farnsworth says. “In addition, there were natural barriers, like rock outcroppings and aspen stands, to slow it down if it moved south.”

Farnsworth thought Bear Creek was a good candidate for Wildland Fire Use, a firefighting strategy that allows for management or containment of certain fires, as opposed to immediate suppression. The goal is to allow a natural fire regime to return to some forests that have been deprived of fire for more than a century by all-out suppression. Proponents contend it’s the wave of the future; opponents call it madness.

The Bear Creek Fire qualified for Wildland Fire Use because it was naturally caused and did not threaten a populated area. “In addition, sufficient firefighting resources were available nearby, fire danger was moderate, the weather forecast was favorable, and the fire was ignited inside wilderness,” says Farnsworth, who has experience managing some two dozen similar fires across the West.

It was also burning at high elevation in sub-alpine forests dominated by Engelmann spruce and sub-alpine fir, where the climate is cool and moist from a snowpack that lingers for up to eight months each year. Relative humidity is often high, and large dead logs that pile up on the forest floor rarely dry out enough to burn.

“Because fire is so rare, I believe its effect to be ecologically significant in these sub-alpine forests,” says Rosalind Wu, a San Juan fire ecologist. “Unlike our lower-elevation forests, dry conditions don’t occur in the spruce-fire forests very often, and many centuries can pass between major fires.

“Any fire that occurs in the spruce-fir would still be an ecologically healthy fire,” Wu says.

Window of opportunity

Forest Supervisor Mark Stiles got the next aerial view of the fire. From what he saw, he, too, felt that a narrow window of opportunity had opened.

Conditions were dry enough for the sub-alpine forest to burn, but not dry enough for the fire to become dangerous. At 28 acres, Bear Creek was officially tagged for Wildland Fire Use. Local firefighters staffed posts, and a specially trained team from Bandelier National Park in New Mexico was called to assist.

Stiles based a large part of his decision on firefighter safety. The Bear Creek Fire was burning in rough, inaccessible terrain. He felt it would be unsafe to put firefighters on its northern boundary high in the wilderness. “Managing fire to allow for its natural role may turn out to be one of the single most important steps in ensuring firefighter safety,” he says. “Our thought processes are more focused because we don’t go in with such a feeling of urgency.”

But Vallecito residents were feeling a sense of urgency. Pam Wilson, San Juan fire information officer, set up an information center to field their questions.

“We knew it was going to be controversial from the start,” Wilson says. “I knew what these people had gone through the year before with the Missionary Ridge Fire, and I had to try to convince them that the Bear Creek Fire would be a benefit to them in the future.”

Vallecito is a small community set on the shores of a high-elevation reservoir. The Weminuche Wilderness boundary abuts the edge of town, and high peaks and forests dominate views. The economy revolves around summer tourism; the winter population of 500 swells to about 1,500 in the summer.

It’s an idyllic setting that prior to the Missionary Ridge Fire had not experienced a wildfire for perhaps more than a century. As a result, the possibility of fire was not what most people saw when they looked at the surrounding national forest, which supports both their quality of life and their economy.

“Many people come here because they love the scenery, like the aspen turning color in fall,” Stiles says. “Very few realize that when they see large patches of aspen, the process that created the natural beauty that drew them to the area is the very thing they don’t want to live with: fire.”

“People who live in places where there is more fire seem to adapt their lifestyles and thinking,” says Ron Klatt, the San Juan’s Columbine Ranger District fire-management officer. “Around Vallecito, fire had happened so infrequently that people were too distant from the reality.”

As the Bear Creek Fire grew slowly in the wilderness, it was closely monitored. Crews stood ready to build fire lines, if necessary.

The U.S. Forest Service continued to reassure residents and visitors that there was no threat to private property, but people were still on edge. “It was a visceral reaction to the fact that there was another fire on the hill just a year after Missionary Ridge,” Klatt says. “They remembered they’d been out of their homes, living in motels or with friends, and that their businesses were totally shut down for the bulk of the season.”

It was also a typical reaction to what seems like an about-face by the agency to its usual message that all fires are bad and should be put out. Vallecito resident Powell had fought fires in the 1950s in Grand Teton National Park. “It was, ‘Put all the resources on it and put it out the minute you find it’,” he says. Like his neighbors, he found it hard to accept that the Forest Service was not trying to put this fire out.

Out of the frying pan

On the fourth day, the situation changed as the wind shifted, pushing flames southeast into a large clearcut. The area had been considered a barrier to the fire’s spread because of its lush green meadows and limited reforestation, but it was also dotted with old slash piles of burnable fuel. The wind sent sparks flying, and in a few hours, the fire grew tenfold. A Forest Service road and a wilderness trail were closed, and containment was ordered on the southeastern edge.

“Its spreading south was not outside what we had contemplated, and we were prepared, but what happened was on the extreme end of what we thought was likely,” Stiles says.

The unexpected winds lasted only one afternoon. Stiles decided to continue to manage the Bear Creek Fire under Wildland Fire Use. When it was upgraded to a higher level of complexity Incident Commander Bill Clark and the Great Basin Fire Use Management Team arrived from Idaho to take charge.

“I don’t know of too many line officers who would have stuck by that decision, but it was appropriate,” Clark says. “We have a long way to go internally to learn how to deal with fire in a proactive, rather than reactive, mode. The culture that I and every other (incident commander) were raised in is that all-out-control philosophy.”

Clark is one of the founders of Wildland Fire Use, which wasn’t formally recognized as part of the national interagency firefighting program until 1998. After 33 years of fighting fires, he says, managing a fire through containment strategies, as opposed to attacking it with full suppression, is like the difference between playing chess and playing checkers.

“It’s the hardest mental task I’ve undertaken,” he says. “People think we just let them burn, but we have to constantly stay out ahead of a fire instead of just hammering it into the ground. We assess the changing threats on a daily basis so that we can design mitigation measures in advance to lower the risks.”

However, the choice is rare. In the past six years, of 678 wildland fires that occurred on the San Juan National Forest and adjacent BLM land, only 45, less than 7 percent, were managed under Wildland Fire Use. A recent New York Times article reported that only 110 of more than 10,000 wildfires in national forests last year were allowed to burn naturally.

“While the percentage may seem small, Wildland Fire Use is growing every year as fire managers, resource specialists and concerned citizens learn more about the interconnections between ecosystem health, firefighter safety and the rising costs of fire suppression,” Clark says.

Can’t stand the heat?

When Clark took over, the Bear Creek Fire had grown to 1,363 acres. More than 250 firefighters had been assigned to the team’s command, with an air tanker and two helicopters offering air support. Clark had walked into a complex situation.

Emotions became more and more charged, and the controversy was elevated from a local arena to a national one. In a letter to Foreest Service Chief Dale Bosworth, Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell expressed his concern: “It seems to me that allowing small naturally caused fires to grow into thousands of acres before containing them defies common sense and is a huge misuse of taxpayers’ money.”

Jerry Williams, Forest Service director of fire and aviation management, wrote back: “Our strategy is to halt the fire’s spread in areas closest to the community while allowing it to continue moving northward, further into Wilderness under close scrutiny. We believe our decision … is responsible and cost-effective.”

Neither Stiles nor Clark was pressured to change their tactics of suppressing 30 percent of the fire’s southern permiter while allowing it to work its way north into the wilderness on the other 70 percent. The team continued its work.

Where there’s smoke

The biggest issue for Vallecito was the smoke. Because of topography, smoke from the fire funneled down a deep canyon, settling in the valley at night and lingering until midmorning.

“Smoke is where the public, without choice, has to live with the impacts of Wildland Fire Use,” says Sarah Gallup, a Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment field liaison sent to assess the situation. “Smoke is a symbol of fire that triggers all the physical and emotional responses we have to fire, and those people at Vallecito had been tapped out the year before.”

She installed particulate monitors in the community to monitor air quality. Although airborne-particulate levels were higher during the Bear Creek Fire than Gallup had seen during prescribed burns, they didn’t violate health standards. But smoke sensitivities vary, and even with air quality within acceptable levels, some Vallecito residents suffered from smoke allergies and respiratory problems.

“We just kept our home shut up as tight as we could,” Powell says. “That was hard on my wife because she loves the fresh air and light. I’m asthmatic myself, and it’s pretty hard to tell people like me it’s the best time in 50 years to let it burn.”

In the hot seat

Wilson, the San Juan information officer, was charged with breaking that difficult news. Starting at the fire’s outbreak, she and her staff worked 12-hour shifts to help the community understand what the Forest Service was trying to accomplish.

“It was the most difficult and challenging assignment of my career,” she says. “Emotions were high, and there was economic trauma; one woman came into the information center every day in tears.”

Wilson coordinated several community meetings so residents could speak directly with fire managers. Meetings were crowded and confrontational.

“People really did get emotional, and there was a lot of upset and hollering,” says Marilyn McCord, a year-round resident. “The sense was of the community being fractured; people were on edge and fragile.”

“When you put out a fire, people have signs calling you a hero,” Klatt says. “During Bear Creek, people consistently gave us one-finger salutes when we drove by in our trucks.”

Much of the emotion was based on the bottom line. Visitors were canceling reservations at local lodges during the peak of tourist season.

“People kept calling and asking, ‘Is the smoke gone?’” Powell says. “If they were here, they left when the smoke started settling down into the valley every night. Nobody wanted to breathe the smoke, even if they were reassured the fire wouldn’t get them.”

Stiles offered to call guests who were canceling reservations. He got only one request to do so and wasn’t able to appease the woman on the other end of the line.

“She said that if I couldn’t promise her there wouldn’t be a fire within 100 miles of Vallecito, they couldn’t come. I told her I couldn’t promise her that because we hadn’t had a situation like that in the last three years.”

Clark’s team tried to offset the economic impacts. Firefighters ate meals at local restaurants when possible. (The Forest Service must use a national catering contract when personnel numbers reach a certain point.) The overhead crew, truck drivers, helicopter pilots, flight crews and mechanics stayed in local motels. Everyone bought gas at local stations.

“We appreciated it,” Powell says, “but it couldn’t make up for people canceling reservations.”

Dying embers

After about two weeks, the Bear Creek Fire stabilized and things in Vallecito calmed down. Clark’s team transitioned out, leaving local fire officials to monitor the site. The fire was officially declared out in mid-September, leaving behind the kind of natural mosaic that makes an ecologist smile and an incident commander proud.

“There was high tree mortality, but grasses and forbs survived,” Wu says. “Fire intensity was high, with flame lengths of 50 to 100 feet, but fire severity was relatively low, in that ground vegetation was left intact, and soils were mostly lightly burned.”

“Outside of the politics, it was a beautiful fire that closed the only hole around that community where the Missionary Ridge Fire didn’t burn,” Clark says.

Final size: 1,869 acres. Final cost: $1.2 million; four minor firefighting injuries.

The Durango Herald conducted a survey on its website asking, “Should the USFS allow wildfires, like the Bear Creek Fire, to burn?” Almost 70 percent of 1,672 respondents answered yes.

But the report card remains mixed. “We need to be able to use this tool in areas like Bear Creek, where we can actually help restore a natural ecological process while making a community safer,” Farnsworth says. “But this may have come too close on the heels of the Missionary Ridge Fire. That community had a tough couple of years.”

Vallecito residents also have mixed emotions.

“You can’t answer it in black and white,” says McCord. “But once the fire was started by lightning, I think it was the right thing to take advantage of it to get rid of the downed timber.”

“Most people still don’t think it was a good decision,” Powell says. “A high percentage of them are still plumb mad at the Forest Service.”

In reviewing the Bear Creek Fire as a lesson in the practicality of implementing Wildland Fire Use, officials argue that ensuring firefighter safety, encouraging the evolution of firefighting methods and reintroducing fire’s natural role override the social impacts.

“I think it was the right thing to do,” Klatt says. “We spend a lot of money and put a lot of young people at risk trying to totally suppress every single fire.”

And no one disputes that for the Forest Service to be successful, the public must be included in the evolution of thought and action. For that to happen, residents of the West still need to think of fire and smoke in much the same way they think of rain and snow – as inevitable and necessary forces of nature.

“The question is, What is man’s role in dealing with fire?” Stiles says. “Should you interfere with all of them and put them out? Or should you try to allow certain fires to accomplish a natural role? If you’re only worried about the next 50 years, then the answer is to interfere, but if you project into the future, perhaps Wildland Fire Use is the answer.”

Ann Bond is an information specialist with the San Juan National Forest/ San Juan Resource Area.

The company building a new $10 million sewage treatment plant for the Cortez Sanitation District is suing the district and the engineering firm that designed the project for nearly $2 million more.

The third amended complaint of the lawsuit was filed in district court April 21, and the case is set for trial next summer unless a settlement is reached.

RMCI of Colorado Inc. is alleging breach of contract by the district, charging that it refused to approve necessary change orders regarding the design and construction of the aereation basins and other aspects of the project.

According to court documents, RMCI had asked the district board to pay for additional expense the company says it incurred to correct problems created by soil conditions that allegedly were not described accurately in the soil study. The company also asked the board to extend the completion date by 160 days, but the board refused both requests, based on the engineer’s recommendation.

The engineering company, Denver-based Richard Arber Associates, Inc., is also being sued for alleged negligence and misrepresentation, according to the complaint, and for trying to intimidate RMCI into withdrawing its request for the change orders.

“The engineer had duties to the contractor to not misrepresent the conditions to be encountered,” states the complaint, which accuses Arber of “failing and refusing to disclose known concealed subsurface (soil) conditions.”

In answer to this charge, Aber contends that RMCI “knew the soil conditions that would be encountered in the excavation of the aeration basins.”

The complaint also alleges that offensive behavior by Arber’s inspector toward RMCI employees created a “hostile work environment.”

Those “áctivities included but were not limited to making sexually suggestive comments and gestures to RMCI employees,” the complaint alleges. The inspector, who was not named in the complaint, is also accused of “inappropriate conduct such as singing war chants and doing rain dances directed at RMCI’s Native American employees.”

The lawsuit also alleges that the engineer threatened to “get” the contractor unless it withdrew its request for the change orders. It claims the engineer also threatened to withhold approval and recommendations for payment and to increase the level of scrutiny by inspectors.

In its answer to the complaint, Arber flatly denied these allegations.

Although construction of the new treatment plant, located on South Broadway adjacent to the current facility, is proceeding, it is way behind schedule. The plant is not expected to be up and running until next April, according to Bob Diederich, president of the district board. The original projected completion date was March of this year.

Diederich said he could not comment on the litigation itself.

The attorney representing the district, Mark Gruskin in Denver, said the district “is vigorously contesting the claims asserted by RMCI.”

He declined to go into specifics, however, and would not comment on the possibility of a countersuit.

“My concern to keep the litigation issues in court and let the (court) papers speak for themselves,” Gruskin said. The matter is at a very early stage, he added, and no discovery (release of evidence to both sides) has occurred yet.

“The project is still ongoing, so we anticipate there will be additional claims and counterclaims,” he said.

Gruskin said the cause of the project’s construction delay “is a matter that is in dispute in litigation.”

The attorney for the plaintiff, Daniel Gregory in Durango, did not return a phone call from the Free Press.

RMCI alleges that construction plans for the aeration basin – a 16,000-square-foot pond that helps purify waste water by exposing it to air and sunlight – didn’t accurately describe the soil conditions underneath, and required a compaction that was impossible to attain in the “loose, wet, soft unstable soil.” The basin’s poor design then resulted in a failure of its sloped walls that cost more than $1 million to repair, the company claims in the complaint.

RMCI alleges the geotechnical report did not provide soil properties and physical properties in the aereation basins to the required depth of excavation.

Construction began in January 2003. According to the complaint, the next month, RMCI discovered the unexpected soil conditions and asked for written directions on how to proceed. The engineer did not give a written response, the company alleges.

In March 2003, RMCI experienced severe slope failure during excavation of the aereation basins, the complaint states. It had to perform emergency work to make sure the existing sewage facility remained secure and operational, the company maintains.

“As a result of differing site conditions encountered at the bottom of the aeration basins, and lack of any prompt, written decision by the engineer, a slope failure of the side wall of the aeration basins occured, resulting in the contractor having to perform certain emergency work,” RMCI states in its complaint.

They flattened the angle of the slope but it failed anyway, according to court documents.

RMCI also charges that Richard Arber Associates was negligent in creating contract documents that required unattainable compaction of the excavation basins to 95 percent, and that the angle of the side walls that was insufficient given the soil conditions.

One allegation of misrepresentation regards RMCI’s assertion that the engineer claimed standard compacting equipment could be used to firm up the soil under the basins rather than expensive specialized equipment.

The construction contract was entered into in November 2002 and work was to be completed in 480 days, or by March of this year, according to the contract. After that time, the company is liable for a $1,000-a-day penalty under the contract.

In its answer to the complaint, the sanitation district denies there were differing site conditions and inadequate design.

“We believe that the district has followed its contractual responsibilities,” Gruskin maintained.

“The board for the district is very respectful of their obligations to their constituents and they’re trying to act with the best interests of the district in mind.”

Other unexpected expenses the company is trying to recoup include nearly a half-million dollars for changing the location a building and some equipment because it wasn’t possible to build it where the plan specified, and for several smaller items that so far add up to more than $100,000.

The new treatment plant was approved by district voters in May 2000 because the old plant was nearing capacity. However, Diederich said the aging facility will be able to handle the delay.

“Oh, yeah, it’s still putting along,” Diederich said. “There’s no problem there.”

This summer, a Division of Wildlife biologist and a state health department researcher will go fishing at McPhee and Narraguinnep reservoirs. Their excursions won’t be recreational. Instead, they will be acquiring samples of fish to test for mercury.

The data should provide a few more pieces to a puzzle that has troubled area biologists, anglers, and local citizens for more than a decade: Why are mercury levels high in certain fish species in those particular lakes, and what can be done to bring the levels down?

Many citizens point a finger at nearby coal-burning power plants, saying they need to reduce the amount of mercury they disgorge into the atmosphere. But local power plants are only part of a larger, complex picture, researchers say. And mercury is not just a regional concern, it’s a problem of global proportions.

The new testing at local reservoirs comes as a furor rages nationwide over mercury pollution.

On April 29, the Environmental Protection Agency, deluged by hundreds of thousands of responses, extended by 60 days the public-comment period on the Bush administration’s controversial proposed mercury standards for power plants. The comment period now ends June 29, and final action on the proposed rule has been pushed back from December 2004 to March 2005.

Adding urgency to the debate, the EPA in January doubled its estimate of how many infants in the United States are born with blood mercury levels higher than its “level of concern,” 5.8 parts per billion. The agency now says more than 630,000 babies each year are born with elevated mercury levels, and more than 1 in 12 women of reproductive age may have enough mercury in their bodies to put fetuses at risk.

Don’t eat too much fish

Mercury is familiar to anyone who has ever seen a thermometer containing the liquid metal. Many children, unaware of the substance’s toxicity, played with blobs of “quicksilver” from broken thermometers before the old-fashioned instruments were phased out in favor of digital ones.

Those children probably did themselves no lasting harm, but children and pregnant women are particularly vulnerable to mercury. The chemical especially affects the central nervous system and kidneys, and at high levels can cause kidney failure, memory problems, tremors, personality changes and death.

Acute cases of mercury poisoning are rare, but chronic exposure in infants or children can cause learning deficits, developmental disorders and neurological or heart damage.

For most people, the only danger of mercury exposure comes from eating fish. Certain saltwater fish such as shark, swordfish and tuna are often contaminated with mercury, and fish in freshwater lakes can harbor high levels of the substance as well.

Eight lakes in Colorado carry mercury advisories warning anglers not to eat too much of certain types of fish. In addition to McPhee and Narraguinnep, they are Navajo, Sanchez, Teller, Ladora, Mary and Lower Derby reservoirs.

Portions of the San Juan River from the Hammond Diversion to the mouth of the Mancos River are also under mercury advisory, as is Lake Farmington in San Juan County, N.M.

In northern Arizona, fish-consumption advisories due to mercury are in effect for Lower and Upper Lake Mary, Long Lake, and Soldier Lake near Flagstaff, as well as Lyman Lake 20 miles west of the New Mexico border.

As of 2000, more than 52,000 lakes in 40 states nationwide had mercury advisories, according to the EPA, as well as 238,000 miles of rivers.

A complex process

Mike Japhet, aquatic biologist with the DOW in Durango, said it’s difficult to tell whether mercury levels in local fish are showing a trend, because they have been tested only twice in the last 12 years or so.

In June and July, he will be working with Lucia Machado, physical-research scientist with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, to conduct testing at McPhee and Narraguinnep, as well as Navajo Reservoir on the New Mexico border.

“We need to have updated data,” Machado said.

Why one lake’s fish show high concentrations and not another’s is unclear, she said.

“There are different patterns,” she said. “It depends on weather, wind and all of that, what is deposited on land around the lake and when erosion brings it into the lake. Some lakes are more prone to making mercury available to the food chain. It’s a very complex process, taking the mercury from an inorganic form and making it available biologically.”

River fish are rarely affected, she said, because swift-flowing water doesn’t lend itself to mercury accumulations.

“In a lake, the opportunity to bioconcentrate is greater, as opposed to a traveling system where the fish are moving,” she said.

Machado said the sampling will involve collecting about 120 fish from each lake. For each body of water, two main species of concern are selected and two different size groups within each species. Ideally, 30 fish from each of the four groups will be collected, either through electric shocking or gill nets.

The fish tissue will then be analyzed for mercury content. Results should be available in about two months.

Airborne pollution

Mercury is not being created or destroyed, but human activities are helping to release more of it into the environment. According to the EPA, most mercury sent into the atmosphere comes from municipal-waste, hazardous-waste, and medical-waste incinerators, and coal-fired power plants. But the former three sources were regulated in the 1990s and have greatly reduced their emissions. For the moment, power plants’ mercury emissions remain unregulated.

There are approximately 1,200 coal-burning power plants in the United States, according to the Washington Post. They emit several major pollutants: sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, particulates, carbon dioxide and mercury. Older plants are the worst offenders.

When coal or hazardous wastes are burned, the mercury they contain is released. It can be carried thousands of miles before being deposited on ground or water.

Mercury is also present in some ores and soils, and can leach into bodies of water from mining sites.

But airborne pollution is the main problem. According to the EPA, roughly 60 percent of the mercury deposition occurring in the U.S. comes from domestic, human-caused pollution. The U.S. contributes only about 3 percent of the total global atmospheric mercury, but it still exports more than it imports, according to the EPA.

Coal-fired plants released more than 45 tons of mercury and mercury compounds into the air in 2001 and were the largest industrial source of mercury emissions, according to EPA’s 2001 Toxic Release Inventory. That makes up about 30 percent of the human-caused mercury emissions in the U.S. and 1 percent of them worldwide, according to industry sources.

In December 2000, under the Clinton administration, the EPA found that mercury from power plants is a hazardous air pollutant and should be regulated under the Clean Air Act. Power plants thus would have to slash mercury emissions by 90 to 95 percent by 2007.

But the Bush administration decided that goal wasn’t feasible with existing technology and has sought to revoke the finding. It is proposing instead a 29 percent reduction by 2007 and an industry-wide reduction of 70 percent by 2018, according to the Washington Post.

Under the new proposal, mercury would be regulated under a different section of the Clean Air Act and emissions could be “traded.” Companies that failed to meet standards could buy credits from other power plants anywhere in the U.S. that were less-polluting.

The most harmful form

Mercury exists in different forms, including elemental mercury vapor and mercury salts. Such inorganic types of mercury are not well absorbed by living organisms and hence aren’t very harmful.

But inorganic mercury can be converted by bacteria to an organic form called methylmercury, which is much more easily absorbed and more dangerous.

Such a process often occurs in bodies of water, when inorganic mercury is deposited, exposed to sunlight, ionized and oxidized, consumed by micro-organisms and turned into methylmercury. The micro-organisms are eaten by fish that are in turn eaten by other fish.

Gradually, the element accumulates in older fish and those higher on the food chain. This occurs even though mercury levels in the water itself may be acceptable, as is the case at McPhee and Narraguinnep.

If humans eat enough contaminated fish, over time they can develop elevated mercury levels. Likewise, wild animals that consume lots of fish – such as mink, otters and eagles – can be harmed.

Pinpointing the direct sources of the mercury is almost impossible, but educated guesses and modeling can suggest answers.

A 2003 TMDL (Total Maximum Daily Load) report by the state health department and EPA estimated that in McPhee, just 10 percent of the mercury came from airborne sources and 90 percent from other sources, particularly the Rico/Silver Creek, Dunton, and La Plata mining districts in the Dolores River watershed.

On the other hand, nearly half of the mercury in Narraguinnep was estimated to have come from airborne sources.

Whether those airborne sources are mainly local is open for debate.

The Four Corners is home to a number of coal-fired power plants. The Grand Canyon Trust, an environmental group, estimates some 3,000 pounds of mercury is belched into the air annually by facilities in the region.

Two of the largest are the San Juan Generating Station in Waterflow, N.M., and the Four Corners Power Plant near Fruitland, N.M.

According to 2000 EPA data, the San Juan facility then spewed 751 pounds of mercury annually, while the Four Corners plant released 621 pounds. The Navajo power plant in Page, Ariz., added 341 pounds.

Also affecting the region’s air were the Mohave Generating Station with 399 pounds a year, and the Springerville and Coronado plants in eastern Arizona, which released a combined total of 640 pounds of mercury.

By contrast, the most-polluting Colorado plant in 1999 was the Craig plant in Moffat County, which emitted 128 pounds, according to EPA data.

“A global problem”

But industry officials say local plants are unfairly blamed.

Amy Miller, spokesperson for Public Service Company of New Mexico, which owns and operates the San Juan Generating Station, said research by the Electric Power Research Institute, an industry non-profit, shows that most mercury deposition in the U.S. originates from outside the country.

She said atmospheric modeling shows the majority of mercury in the area comes from Asia, particularly China, where there are few environmental controls. “It’s a global problem and an international challenge,” she said.

She said Western power plants emit mainly elemental mercury, not methylmercury.

Miller said PNM is working to reduce pollution. In 1998, it installed an $80 million limestone scrubbing system at the San Juan station that cut sulfur-dioxide emissions by 64 percent, she said. The system also removes some mercury, but not enough to meet the stricter proposed standards.

“The challenge for Western plants is that we burn sub-bituminous coal, and pollution-control systems are not as good at removing mercury from it as in Eastern states where they burn bituminous coal,” she said.

“Everyone in our industry is going to have to look at mercury emissions and improve our reductions. The challenge is finding technology that can do that.”

U.S. mercury levels peaked in 1960, she said, and have declined since.

Miller said achieving the Clinton administration’s target reductions is not feasible, given today’s technology.

“Too weak and too slow”

But Jon Devine, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, D.C., said new emissions-cleaning methods are in the works that could make those goals feasible in the near future.

“Two makers of pollution-control equipment have said there is technology available now or which will be available soon that will achieve 80 to 90 percent reductions from all coal types,” Devine said.

He called the Bush administration proposal “far too weak and far too slow.”

“The proposed cap-and-trade program first calls for no near-term reductions except for those occurring from other pollution-controls,” he said, “and then gives sources an extended time line to reduce their mercury emissions.”

The EPA proposal established a second cap in 2018 designed to achieve a 69 percent cut from present levels, he said, “ but because of the cap-and-trade program, facilities will be allowed to bank emissions reductions they make earlier and use those when the second cap becomes effective.”

The EPA’s own modeling anticipates only a 50 percent cut in emissions by 2022, he said.

“It’s hard to say which individual plants will pollute more or will fail to reduce, but for those folks who live near the ones that do, it certainly raises the possibility that they will be part of a hot spot where mercury levels will continue to be high,” Devine said.

More fumes for the Four Corners?

That’s exactly the fear of the Durango-based San Juan Citizens Alliance, an environmental group.

“Those regulations will directly influence us in the Four Corners,” said Dan Randolph, oil and gas organizer for the alliance. “The mercury cap-and-trade system favors those areas which have both the political and economic ability to demand clean air. What that means is the power plants back East which affect larger populations will trade with people here so they can continue to pollute more.”

Complicating the picture, he said, is that there are two proposals for a new power plants on the Navajo reservation.

German-based Steag has proposed a 1,500-megawatt plant due south of the Four Corners plant and similar in scale to the San Juan station, Randolph said. Steag has submitted a permit application to the EPA and hopes to start construction in 2005.

BHP Billiton of Australia has proposed a 500-megawatt plant for the same site if the first proposal is rejected.

The newer plant would be less-polluting than existing ones, Randolph said, “but until the older plants are cleaned up, the question is, can our air quality really stand another big hit?”

Besides, he said, every time another coal-fired plant is built, there is less reason to look for new power sources.

“To the extent that we build more capacity in fossil-fuel energy sources, we are creating a disincentive for moving beyond fossil fuels.

“And as the Four Corners continues to be a massive cheap energy source, we will continue to have questionable air.”

The NRDC’s Devine agreed. “Power plants are the single largest unregulated source of mercury in the U.S.,” Devine said. “All but a handful of states have fish advisories for some of their water bodies. It’s high time to get about the job of controlling these plants.”