Coal Ash Contamination

  • 2.6 billion pounds of arsenic and other toxic pollutants flooded over nearby farmland and into the river. (Photo courtesy of the Tennessee Department Of Health)

When a dam broke a year ago in Kingston,
Tennessee, the town experienced one
of the biggest environmental disasters
in US history. Billions of gallons
of waterlogged coal ash from a nearby
power plant streamed into the Emory
River. Tanya Ott reports
the contamination was even greater
than originally thought:

Transcript

When a dam broke a year ago in Kingston,
Tennessee, the town experienced one
of the biggest environmental disasters
in US history. Billions of gallons
of waterlogged coal ash from a nearby
power plant streamed into the Emory
River. Tanya Ott reports
the contamination was even greater
than originally thought:

2.6 billion pounds of arsenic and other toxic pollutants. That’s how much
contamination flooded over nearby farmland and into the river.

That comes
from a report by the Environmental Integrity Project.

Eric Schaeffer is the
project’s Executive Director and a former official with the Environmental
Protection Agency. He says 2.6 billion pounds is more than the total
discharges from all U-S power plants last year.

“The toxic metals, once they get into the environment,
and especially once they get into sediment, are notoriously difficult to
clean up.”

Difficult and expensive. The Tennessee Valley Authority puts the price tag
at about a billion dollars.

The EPA was supposed to propose tougher
disposal standards for toxic ash by the end of 2009. But the agency delayed
that decision.

For The Environmental Report, Im Tanya Ott.

Related Links

The State of the Nation’s Lakes

  • The EPA found that 44% of the nation's lakes ranked fair or poor. (Photo by Randolph Femmer, courtesy of the National Biological Information Infrastructure)

The Environmental Protection Agency
has released its first comprehensive
survey of the nation’s lakes. Samara Freemark tells us what
the study turned up:

Transcript

The Environmental Protection Agency
has released its first comprehensive
survey of the nation’s lakes. Samara Freemark tells us what
the study turned up:

More than half the nation’s lakes are in good condition. That’s according to a nationwide survey just released by the EPA. But the agency found that 44% of lakes ranked only fair or poor.

The survey identified two major problems facing lakes. First, many of them are surrounded by development. And that can mean dirt and polluted water running off into the lakes.

And second, many lakes contained high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus, which can lead to harmful algae blooms.

Susan Holdsworth is with the EPA. She says those findings were concerning.

“These stressors are both widespread and pose a significant threat to the condition of our nation’s lakes.”

Holdsworth says the EPA will use the data to assess how well government programs are doing at protecting lakes. The results will also help set future EPA priorities.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark.

Related Links

Part 3: Hydrofracking for Gas

  • Fracturing has increased available domestic natural gas supply by 35%. (Photo source: TheSilentPhotographer at Wikimedia Commons)

A new wave of natural gas drilling
is spreading across the country.
But the process is on hold in New
York state while regulators and
citizens debate the issue. Samara Freemark reports
that some New Yorkers see drilling
as a way to save the economy of a
particularly depressed part of the
state. But others say it could ruin
the economy for good:

Transcript

A new wave of natural gas drilling
is spreading across the country.
But the process is on hold in New
York state while regulators and
citizens debate the issue. Samara Freemark reports
that some New Yorkers see drilling
as a way to save the economy of a
particularly depressed part of the
state. But others say it could ruin
the economy for good:

When Kathy Colley heard that natural gas drillers were coming to upstate New York, it was kind of like someone had told her that the whole region had won the lottery.

“Here we have this wonderful god given opportunity. This is a blessing.”

That’s because Colley and her neighbors had learned that they had natural gas beneath their land.

New York State’s natural gas was supposed to be untappable- it was too far down, and it was suspended in tiny bubbles in shale rock. But a new technique called hydraulic fracturing made drilling possible in those kinds of shale fields. Fracturing has increased available domestic natural gas supply by 35%.

Drillers started moving into New York State last year. But officials there put a moratorium on the practice while regulators debated whether to allow fracturing.

For Kathy Colley, it’s a no-brainer. Drilling means saving a dying regional economy.

“It’s been such a depressed area. It’s struggling. The farmers are dying here. This is a time when it would just give people a life. Billions of dollars. Thousands of jobs. This is an opportunity to get healthy.”

A lot of local officials all across the country feel the same way. Gas drilling can mean tax revenues, and jobs, and economic development.

But some people say that while drilling may bring in some money at first, in the long run it’s a lousy way to develop a local economy.

“It’s an unsustainable form of economic development.”

That’s Adam Flint. He works with the Binghamton Regional Sustainability Coalition in upstate New York.

“However much gas is under the ground, it is unrenewable.”

And when the gas runs out, the jobs will go. So will the tax revenue. Flint estimates New York would get a couple of decades of gas production before the state’s fields are tapped dry.

That kind of boom and bust cycle is what Wes Gillingham is worried about. Gillingham is a farmer and environmentalist who heads an organization called Catskill Mountainkeeper. I met up with him and his family at his farm house.

He showed me a banjo he had bought cheap in Casper, Wyoming in the 1980s, at the end of an oil boom.

“I had never seen a place in my life that had so many pawnshops. And the pawnshops were just stuffed to the ceiling with really nice stuff- really nice stuff, at really cheap prices, cause everyone was just pawning everything they had.”

He’s afraid the same thing will happen in upstate New York.

“I always think about this when people say, ‘but we need the gas.’ Prices go up, companies come in, they put more rigs out, and there’s this huge influx of money and activity and then when the price drops back down they shut it all down. That has huge impacts on the community.”

And it’s not just the boom and bust. There are also environmental impacts like a legacy of water pollution, abandoned infrastructure, and habitat destruction.

Adam Flint says those kinds of problems would prevent upstate New York from ever developing any kind of stable long-term economy.

“It’s a question of which road to travel. We can have gas production and turn upstate New York into a major industrial zone. Or we can have tourism, agriculture, a green economy, alterative energy, jobs that all those things create. We can’t do both.”


New York state officials are almost certain to approve gas drilling this year – 2010. When they do, there’s a long line of community and environmental groups ready to challenge the state in court.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark.

Related Links

Part 2: Hydrofracking for Gas

  • Frackers dig mile-deep wells and pump them with millions of gallons of water, sand, and chemicals. (Photo by Vera Scroggins)

Natural gas burns a lot cleaner than
oil and coal, so a lot of people are
excited about gas’s role in a greener
energy sector. But drilling for natural
gas? That’s not quite so green. Samara Freemark tells us that
as a new kind of drilling spreads across
the country, so do environmental
concerns:

Transcript

Natural gas burns a lot cleaner than
oil and coal, so a lot of people are
excited about gas’s role in a greener
energy sector. But drilling for natural
gas? That’s not quite so green. Samara Freemark tells us that
as a new kind of drilling spreads across
the country, so do environmental
concerns:

It’s been about a year and a half since drilling companies first broke ground on natural gas wells in Dimock, Pennsylvania, in the northeastern corner of the state.

The drillers used a recently developed technique called hydraulic fracturing – or fracking. Frackers dig mile-deep wells and pump them with millions of gallons of water, sand, and chemicals.

Right now, fracking isn’t regulated by the federal government – though Congress is considering changing that.

So the process has generated a lot of concerns about pollution – in particular, fears that gas and chemicals could leach out into aquifers and groundwater.

Which is probably what happened in Dimock. Vera Scroggins is an anti-drilling activist who lives nearby.

“It started to happen pretty quickly because as they went down there, as they went through the aquifers they broke through the rock where the gas pockets are, and the gas got released into the aquifers and then it got into the water wells. So people started to notice like blackish, yellowish, bubbly water. So it’s been about 11 months that they haven’t drank their water.”

Since fracking started, Dimock has been plagued with environmental problems – chemical spills and leaks, gas found in drinking water, and fish kills in nearby streams. Dimock residents have filed suit against Cabot Oil and Gas, which controls most of the wells around Dimock.

And Scroggins says state authorities have penalized Cabot for spills and leaks.

“Cabot has been fined several times, even since September. They were closed down for two weeks for three spills in a two-week period. So it’s one accident after another.”

The drilling company says that doesn’t mean the problems were caused by drilling.

Ken Komoroski is a Cabot spokesman. He says the company is looking in to the incidents, but they haven’t found proof that fracking caused any problems.

“The company has not come to any conclusion as to whether or not its operations did cause contamination. It’s possible that it has, it’s also entirely possible that it has not.”

Many gas companies maintain that no one has ever proved conclusively that spills and leaks have harmed anyone. And it is hard to pin down figures on fracking accidents, since there’s no centralized database to keep track of incidents.

But problems have been reported at drilling sites across the country.

Many of the complaints center around the chemicals frackers mix with their pumping water.

Natural Resources Defense Council attorney Eric Goldstein showed me a list of those chemicals at an anti-drilling demonstration in New York City. The list was seven pages long – some 260 chemicals in all. Some seemed pretty harmless. But others were more troubling.

“I’m sure you could find a couple out of the 260 that you wouldn’t mind drinking. But you wouldn’t want to take any naphthalene, for example. Or petroleum naptha. Or any of the things we can’t pronounce here. You wouldn’t want to drink talc. Wouldn’t want to drink benzene. Why don’t we just stop right there. Ethyl benzene. That’s a known human carcinogen.”

Drilling companies say that while those chemicals might be dangerous, they’re used in such small quantities that they’re not harmful to people. And companies say they’ve developed protections that keep the chemicals from leaching out into aquifers. For example, drillers line their gas wells with cement casings to keep fracking fluid contained.

But Vera Scroggins – the activist from near Dimock – says she doesn’t believe companies have figured out how to drill safely.

“As they go along, they’re learning things. So we’re being experimented on.”

Until they’ve learned how to prevent all dangerous leaks and spills, Scroggins says, companies shouldn’t be allowed to drill at all.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark.

Related Links

Part 1: Hydrofracking for Gas

  • Fracking has made billions of cubic feet of natural gas available. That’s fuel that can be used for cooking, heating, and some transportation. (Photo courtesy of Argonne National Laboratory)

A new technique for extracting
natural gas is making it profitable
to drill in new gas fields all over
the country. The technique is
called hydrofracking, and it has
raised the nation’s natural gas
reserves by 35%.
But hydrofracking is not without
its critics. Samara Freemark tells us why some people
say the industry is moving faster
than regulators can keep up:

Transcript

A new technique for extracting
natural gas is making it profitable
to drill in new gas fields all over
the country. The technique is
called hydrofracking, and it has
raised the nation’s natural gas
reserves by 35%.
But hydrofracking is not without
its critics. Samara Freemark tells us why some people
say the industry is moving faster
than regulators can keep up:

Ten years ago the American natural gas market wasn’t looking too hot.

“In theory, America was running out of natural gas.”

That’s Susan Riha. She’s a professor of earth sciences at Cornell University. Riha says underground pools of traditional natural gas were starting to dry up.

But there’s another kind of gas – ‘unconventional’ natural gas. It’s suspended in tiny pockets in shale formations, like water in a sponge. And there’s unconventional natural gas all across the United States, especially in the Western states and Pennsylvania and New York.

But recovering large amounts of natural gas from shale formations was until recently, pretty much impossible.

“In the past, it’s been extremely difficult to get that gas out of that rock. They drill down, but the gas is only going to flow from right where they drill. But people began to put effort in to figuring out how to get this gas out. And maybe starting about a decade ago they began to get economically viable ways of recovering shale gas.”

The technique that drillers developed is called hydraulic fracturing – or fracking. Frackers dig mile-deep, L-shaped wells and blast them full of millions of gallons of water mixed with sand and chemicals. That solution holds open tiny fissures in the shale so the gas flows out.

The process raises some eyebrows in the environmental community, but we’ll get to their concerns in a second.

First let’s look at the upside.

Fracking has made billions of cubic feet of natural gas available. That’s fuel that can be used for cooking, heating, and some transportation.

And natural gas is a domestic energy source. It burns a whole lot cleaner than coal and oil. A lot of people say it could be a crucial part of the transition to greener energy.

Which is the point Thomas West made when I met up with him at a public hearing on gas drilling. West is a drilling advocate and attorney who represents gas companies in New York State.

“You have to realize that the shale plays, these unconventional resources, have changed the game in the United States. We now have a hundred years of capacity, which means we no longer have to rely on Mideastern oil. Gas is very usable, it doesn’t take much to make it usable, and it has a dramatic impact on air quality.”

But critics say fracking is a mixed bag.

“Things too good to be true, usually are.”


That’s Al Appleton. He’s an environmental consultant, and he says hydraulic fracking can cause all kinds of environmental problems – water contamination, ecosystem destruction, noise and air pollution.

And Appleton says the process is essentially unregulated. In 2005, Congress passed a law specifically exempting fracking from almost all federal environmental regulations.

“Basically what the law said is that things like the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Hazardous Waste Materials Act, the Clean Water Act, and other significant pieces of federal environmental legislation were not to be applied to the natural gas industry. So in essence, what your local dry cleaner has to comply to all sorts of regulations, the natural gas industry, they don’t have to follow these.”

Some members of Congress are trying to change that. They’ve introduced legislation to repeal fracking’s exemption, give the Environmental Protection Agency authority over the process, and require the industry to disclose what kinds of chemicals it injects into wells. As you might expect, the fracking industry is fighting the bill.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark.

Related Links

Wind on the Water

  • Energy developers are watching how the Cape Wind Project plays out. It could clear the way for more big wind farms off the coasts of places such as New York, Maryland, and Michigan. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

A big shift to alternative energies
such as wind and solar will take a
change in thinking. One example is
the Cape Wind project. Cape Wind
plans to build one-hundred-thirty
windmills in the water. It would
be the country’s first off-shore
wind farm, but not everybody likes
it. Mark Brush reports the fight
over this wind farm could clear
the path for others:

Transcript

A big shift to alternative energies
such as wind and solar will take a
change in thinking. One example is
the Cape Wind project. Cape Wind
plans to build one-hundred-thirty
windmills in the water. It would
be the country’s first off-shore
wind farm, but not everybody likes
it. Mark Brush reports the fight
over this wind farm could clear
the path for others:

Say you want to make some money putting up windmills. You need a place with lots of wind, lots of open space, and lots of people who will want to buy your power.

It turns out, Nantucket Sound off the east coast is an ideal setting.

Jim Gordon first proposed the Cape Wind Project in 2001. The windmills would be as tall as 40 story buildings. And could power hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses.

“Look, it’s not a question of Cape Wind or nothing. It’s a question of Cape Wind or a new nuclear plant or a new coal plant, or a heavy oil fired power plant.”

And that’s where people on Cape Cod get their power now – a power plant that burns oil. Boats making deliveries to the power plant have spilled oil into the water.

Jim Gordon thought it was a no-brainer. Replace dirty power plants with clean renewable energy.

But his plan ran into a bunch of opposition from rich and powerful people.

Roger Whitcomb wrote a book on the Cape Wind Project. Whitcomb said at a recent lecture that a lot of the opposition came from names we’re all familiar with – the Kennedys, the duPonts, and the Mellons.

“Most of these people were summer people. And they basically just didn’t want to look at these wind turbines, or the way they thought would look, because many of them had actually never seen a wind farm or a wind turbine. But they didn’t like the idea of anything violating the visual integrity of their horizon.”

There’s also some opposition from fisherman, some Indian tribes, and some locals who live on the islands. But Whitcomb says the bulk of the money for the fight against the Cape Wind Project comes from the rich and powerful.

Right now, those groups are challenging environmental reviews and permits in the Massachusetts Supreme Court. All these legal challenges – all these permitting hoops – put a damper on big projects.

Roger Whitcomb says we used to be a people who thought big. But that’s changed.

“It’s very difficult to do anything in the United States anymore. We’re way behind everybody else. This isn’t a can-do country anymore. There’s been a huge change. This is not where things are done.”

Energy developers are watching how the Cape Wind Project plays out. It could clear the way for more big wind farms off the coasts of places such as New York, Maryland, and Michigan.

And despite all the legal and political barriers, it looks like the country is closer than ever to seeing its first ever offshore wind farm built.

There’s a lot of popular support for the project in the region.

Ken Salazar heads up the Department of Interior. He told us this past spring he expects projects like Cape Wind will go forward.

“You know I expect that it will happen during the first term of the Obama Administration. I think that there is huge potential for wind energy off the shores of especially the Atlantic because of the shallowness of those waters.”

Siting big wind farms is a new kind of battle in this country. In some cases – like the Cape Wind project – energy development is moving closer to the wealthy.

Ian Bowles is the Secretary of the Energy and Environmental Affairs Department for the State of Massachusetts:

“Many of the dirty fossil plants of a generation ago were sited in cities and many times in environmental justice areas where there’s lower income residents. And I think today, you’ve got in many ways you have more wealthy set of opponents of wind power that is going to relieve the people who live in cities of some of the clean air burdens from siting decisions made a generation ago.”

That means some wind farms can change the game. They move power plants from the backyards of the poor, and into the views of the rich and powerful.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

Related Links

Interview: Lester Brown

  • Lester Brown founded the Earth Policy Institute in 2001. (Photo courtesy of the Earth Policy Institute)

One environmental leader says if
we keep doing what we’re doing,
the world will continue on a path
toward economic decline and eventual
collapse. Lester Brown heads up the
Earth Policy Institute. He’s written
a series of books on changes that need
to be made. The most recent book is
‘Plan B 4.0.’ Lester Graham
talked with him about the complexities
involved in a few commodities we take
for granted:

Transcript

One environmental leader says if
we keep doing what we’re doing,
the world will continue on a path
toward economic decline and eventual
collapse. Lester Brown heads up the
Earth Policy Institute. He’s written
a series of books on changes that need
to be made. The most recent book is
‘Plan B 4.0.’ Lester Graham
talked with him about the complexities
involved in a few commodities we take
for granted:

[text of the interview will be posted shortly]

Related Links

Salmon Spawning in Sewage Plant

  • Peter Baranyai directs Wastewater Operations for the Sanitary District of East Chicago, Indiana. The plant's effluent channel looks like a natural stream and has apparently fooled wilflide into thinking so, too. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

You might not expect much good
environmental news to come from
sewage plants, but, believe it or
not, there is some on occasion.
And in one case, that good news
even involves thriving salmon.
Shawn Allee has the story:

Transcript

You might not expect much good
environmental news to come from
sewage plants, but, believe it or
not, there is some on occasion.
And in one case, that good news
even involves thriving salmon.
Shawn Allee has the story:

Sewage plants are often out of sight, out of mind, and people usually like it that way. But people who work at the water treatment plant in East Chicago, Indiana, want everyone to know about an ecological come-back story there.

I’m game. So I meet the plant director Peter Baranyai.

Allee: “You’ve got this strange mix of some really striking natural areas, rivers and streams, but then everything’s kind of dotted by industry as well, and has been for a long time. What kind of industries are we talking about in this region?”

Baranyai: “Basic steel mills, oil refineries, chemical industries also.”

Allee: “So, when they’re talking ‘heavy industry’, they really mean it here?”

Baranyai: “Yes.”

Allee: “What are we looking at here?”

Baranyai: “We’re trying to look at our discharge channel. That’s the effluent from our treatment plant. This pipe here’s a 60-inch pipe.”

Allee: “You can see the water moving out of it pretty quickly.”

The treated wast water is from nearby homes and factories. And when it leaves the pipe, you’d swear it’s a natural stream. Apparently, it’s fooled plenty of critters, including Chinook salmon.

Each Fall, salmon swim from Lake Michigan, past shipping canals, steel mills and chemical factories – just to spawn in the treated waste water.

Baranyai: “They’re not being too cooperative today because I don’t see too much.”

The salmon spawned earlier than normal this year, so, I only find dead salmon on the banks.

Baranyai: “This was a, oh, almost 4-foot chinook salmon.”

Allee: “Or the evidence of it.”

Baranyai: “And he died.”

Allee: “Again, they’re kind of programmed to die after they spawn.”

Baranyai: “Yeah, he died on the rocks here.”

The government introduced Chinook salmon to Lake Michigan decades ago, but for a long time, salmon wouldn’t spawn here, and birds and nearly everything else shied away, too.

Baranyai says one problem was that they used to disinfect water with chlorine.

Baranyai: “It’s a very effective way of disinfecting, but it continues to disinfect downstream. It’s not selective, usually anyhthing that’s alive, it usually kills. It pretty much sterilizes everything. And that’s how most water treatment plants in our country do that, still.”


Baranyai says in the late 80s, things turned around. His plant added better filters, and now, when they disinfect water, they kill bacteria with ultraviolet light, not chlorine. In just a few years, salmon started spawning – right in the plant. Plus, fresh-water sponges grow in the plant, and herons showed up. Word got around.

Roger Klocek was a biologist at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium at the time. He learned the news from a fellow scientist.

Klocek: “I thought he was nuts, literally. What are you talking about?”

Klocek says you have to understand, for a long time people ignored water treatment plants or they expected them to remove only the worst industrial pollutants.

Klocek: “I had no idea that waste water plants themselves could actually contribute to an improved ecology.”


Allee: “Maybe the opposite, they were putting chlorine in the water or bacteria, if they weren’t disinfecting.”

Klocek: “Absolutely, you know we hear constantly that technology is going to save us and I really don’t believe that. I think we put too much stock in that, but it sure is gratifying to see when there is some technology that makes a remarkable improvement.”

Klocek says, too often, people assume industrial areas like East Chicago will always be ecological basket cases.

He says, sure there’s room for improvement, but having one concrete example of something that works? That can give you hope about what nature can do if you give it a chance.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Sewage Treatment Missing the Mark?

  • Some people say wastewater treatment plants might not be doing a good job taking out pollutants like household chemicals and pharmaceuticals. (Photo courtesy of the US EPA)

A new study is looking at just
how well wastewater treatment
plants remove household chemicals
and pharmaceuticals from water.
Samara Freemark reports
on why some researchers are worried
that the plants aren’t doing a good
enough job:

Transcript

A new study is looking at just
how well wastewater treatment
plants remove household chemicals
and pharmaceuticals from water.
Samara Freemark reports
on why some researchers are worried
that the plants aren’t doing a good
enough job:

Most wastewater treatment plants clean water with a mix of chemicals and bacteria. But that process is decades-old. And it was designed mostly to deal with industrial pollutants.

Some people say treatment plants might not be doing a good job taking out other pollutants like household chemicals and pharmaceuticals. In fact, the treatment process can actually cause many of these pollutants to mutate – for example, some detergents break down into compounds that cause reproductive problems.

Anthony Hay is studying the issue at Cornell University.

“Hopefully they’re degraded into something non-toxic, but in some cases microbial degradation of some pollutants can actually make things worse. We need to understand what those changed products do, how they behave, and what risks they might pose.”

That’s what Hay hopes his study will help clarify.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark.

Related Links

Dirty Gold

  • Mary Yeboa lives new Newmont's mine - an American gold mining company. (Photo by Anna Boiko-Weyrauch)

Buying a piece of jewelry for
someone is often an emotional
celebration. But some people
are concerned about the damage
caused by mining that gold.
Anna Boiko-Weyrauch takes us from
the jewelry store to the gold mine:

(Research assistance
provided by the Investigative Fund
of the Nation Institute.)

Transcript

Buying a piece of jewelry for
someone is often an emotional
celebration. But some people
are concerned about the damage
caused by mining that gold.
Anna Boiko-Weyrauch takes us from
the jewelry store to the gold mine:

“It is a white gold band, with a star sapphire in the middle.”

In New York City, Sarah Lenigan is showing off her engagement ring. She got married this summer in California. Nowadays some people like her are starting to wonder where the stuff they buy comes from, including their wedding rings.

“You know the idea of the blood diamond, and not just the movie but, you do think about these things when you think about real jewelry. And this is the first time we’ve bought real jewelry, so it was a whole new ball game, I guess.”

It’s hard to say exactly where the gold in Sarah’s ring came from. Gold isn’t like other commodities – it’s almost impossible to track. But more and more, gold like Sarah’s is coming out of Ghana, in West Africa.

(driving sounds)

We’re driving over a dam on the Subri river in Ghana. The country used to be called the Gold Coast and today it’s the second largest producer of gold in Africa. Most of the gold comes out of a number of large surface mines. They’re all owned by companies from abroad.

At this dam, the American gold mining company, Newmont, stores water and waste from its gold mine.

Adusah Yakubu is with me. He’s a member of a local advocacy group. One side of the dam is green forest and clear water. But the other side looks like the surface of the moon.

“It looks like there’s cement in the river. It’s very hard, and it’s very gray. (What is that?) It’s a tailings dam.”

A tailings dam is where mining companies put waste from processing gold. After the precious metal is extracted, you get a mixture of sand and water. It also contains cyanide. Now, the chemical is poisonous, but it’s used all the time in gold mining. And miners work to control it.

But there are also accidents. Some of that waste overflowed this fall at Newmont’s mine, and killed fish downstream. The company says it was a minor event.

For the people who live around Newmont’s mine, the operations have really disrupted their lives. This river used to be the main source of drinking water and food for nearby villages. Kwame Kumah and his wife, Mary Yeboa live by the dam. They say they used to rely on the river for a lot of things.

“There are so many different things we got from the river. You could even get food from it, like fish, crab. But nowadays we can’t get anything from it.”

Now they can’t go near the water because of security guards. Newmont gave the community a well to make up for it. But the villagers say the dam has brought more mosquitoes, and with the mosquitos, disease. Although the company sold them discounted mosquito nets, Mary Yeboa says she gets sick much more than before.

“Right now, my body hurts all over. As I’m talking to you I have a headache, it really hurts. I don’t feel well at all.”

The gold mining company, Newmont declined to comment for this story.

The company sells its gold on the world market. Some people might buy it as investments, others for manufacturing. Or, it could end up as jewelry, like Sarah Lenigan’s engagement ring. That’s actually where most new gold goes, to jewelry.

Soon jewelry consumers, who care about their impact might be able to get some guidance. Certification systems such as the Responsible Jewelry Council are looking at gold, from the mine to the store.

Council CEO, Michael Rae says they are trying to clean up the jewelry business.

“It looks at environmental performance, social performance, labor standards, occupational health and safety, child labor issues and also in business ethics.”

The system won’t guarantee that gold or diamonds are from a specific mine, but it will reveal whether retailers and miners are making an effort to play fair.

Many jewelry and mining companies have signed on to the code. Newmont, the owner of the mine in Ghana we visited, is not a current member.

For The Environment Report, I’m Anna Boiko-Weyrauch.

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