Biologists Fish For Heavy Metals Pollution Data Usgs Team Studies How Mining Influences Water Quality

They’re like the anti-fishermen.

Six U.S. Geological Survey researchers wade through the fast-moving riffles of the South Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River.

They net a silver-bright rainbow trout, heavy at four or five pounds.

They throw it back.

But they lament the utter lack of sculpin, an ugly little bottom-feeder that acts like the couch potato of the mountain stream - and does nothing for anglers except feed trout.

“Something is wrong when part of the fishery is gone,” said Terry Maret, a USGS biologist from Boise. “To me, it’s highly unusual.”

Less than a mile from the Bunker Hill Superfund site, this sparkling stretch of water is heavily contaminated. Toxic metals - mostly zinc in the water, lead and cadmium in the riverbanks - stem from a century of mining and smelting in the Silver Valley.

Sculpin are thought to be vulnerable to mine waste, Maret said. They also don’t move around much, unlike migratory fish such as trout, so they can’t escape pollution, he said.

“I suspect it is metals related but without further study I can’t say for sure.”

It’s possible something got dumped into the water that killed the fish at once, Maret added.

The USGS team is finishing a summer of field work up and down the Coeur d’Alene River Basin and beyond, ending a three-year, $1.5million regional effort.

The scientists studied mining and the way it influences water quality throughout the northern Rockies. They looked at a range of sites, from pristine spots on the Upper St. Joe River to contaminated sites like the reach near Pinehurst.

Maret and his team spent Wednesday like they’ve spent much of this summer.

Graduate student Ken Skipper maneuvered the team’s bright blue pontoon boat, loaded with a generator to power two electro-fishing wands, a cooler for stunned fish and other scientific equipment.

They worked a few bends from the South Fork’s confluence with the pristine North Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River near the Enaville Resort.

Maret and USGS biologist Mike Beckwith jolted fish with up to 1,000 volts of direct current. A couple of technicians and fellow biologist Dorene MacCoy netted the fish that floated up, white bellies flashing in the muddy water.

Later, MacCoy sliced open 10 brook trout, taking out their livers. Heavy metals tend to accumulate in fish livers.

The organs will be frozen and shipped Monday to the National Water Quality Laboratory in Denver.

The team was pleasantly surprised with the haul they got from a stretch of river some call poisoned: a lot of brook trout, a few rainbows, some mountain whitefish.

Fish such as trout are much more mobile than sculpin, researchers hypothesize, so if mine waste is an issue they can better avoid metals.

Another surprise came last month when they found cutthroat trout and brookies in a river reach near Silverton, which is heavily influenced by mine waste.

Researchers are careful to point out these findings. USGS scientists have weathered years of criticism from the mining industry and others on the controversial issue of heavy metals.

“We’re out doing science,” said Beckwith, who is normally based in Sandpoint. “We don’t have any regulatory agenda.”

The data they are collecting is not part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s sweeping study of mine waste from Mullan to Lake Roosevelt. That high-profile study will dictate the extent - and cost - of mining and smelting pollution.

But the EPA may eventually use some of the USGS findings on fish and other water quality data from the three-year northern Rockies study.

Silver Valley mining companies are skeptical enough of USGS work that they hired their own scientists to analyze fish data.

Experts hired by the mines quarrel with USGS sampling methods, said Laura Skaer, executive director of the Northwest Mining Association in Spokane.

“We want to make sure that with what’s at stake in this, and the dollars that are at stake, the studies are science-based,” Skaer said.

Several Silver Valley companies have offered to pay up to $250million toward cleanup over the next 30 years. The offer, however, still has to be accepted by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Coeur d’Alene Tribe.

Steve Allred, head of the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, spent the week in Washington, D.C., on the settlement bandwagon, meeting with John Podesta, President Clinton’s chief of staff, and other decision-makers.

Allred is encouraged by the USGS research.

“We know there’s been (mining) impacts but that’s a pretty healthy sign if there’s cutthroat up there,” he said.

Meanwhile, after three years of summer field work, the USGS team is ready to get home.

Beckwith said he has missed his wife’s birthday for the past two years.

Maret nodded.

“It’s pretty intense,” he said. “It eats up most of your summer.”

A series of technical reports will outline the team’s findings on fish, algae and macroinvertebrates by the end of 2001.