The Associated Press reports that abandoned mercury mines in the western hills of the Central Valley are still polluting California’s streams, lakes, the delta and the bay. Sources are widespread, located from Clear Lake in the north to the San Joaquin River in the south. Even the hills near San Jose have mines that drain to south San Francisco Bay.

Read the Story at http://tinyurl.com/mq96a6

Crap. As if we didn’t have enough to worry about. I thought this only happened in Appalachia.  

California once produced 90% of the nation’s mercury. Much of it went to the Sierras during the gold rush, where it was spilled into local waterways. Mining ceased decades ago. but there are at least 550 known mines. Some estimates put the total as high 2,000.

Everybody who eats Pacific fish is affected by this, but the impact is hardest on Native American tribes, who live on or near the old mine sites, and the Central Valley’s poor, who engage more in subsistence fishing in streams nearer to the sources.

Mercury gets into our environment from many sources: Coal burning power plants, cement kilns, discarded thermometers, rainfall tainted by air pollution from Asia. Mercury taken up and stored by plants gets released during forest fires too. California isn’t the only place where this happens. A USGS study completed in 2005 found measurable levels of mercury in fish taken from 290 streams across the U.S. One quarter of those had unsafe levels.

The headline of the current AP story is, “Government Stands by as Mercury Taints Water”. Good work fellas – wait until the Democrats are in charge before you spring this.

The cleanup of old mines depends largely on the Federal Government pressing the mine owners with legal action. Such actions dropped by 70% during the BushCo years. Here in California, so many mines have been abandoned for so long, that the only property owner left to go after is a beleaguered cattle rancher.

California Democrats put mercury on the warning labels created by Prop-65. We banned the sale of new mercury thermostats in 2006, and legislation creating a statewide recycling program (AB 2347, Ira Ruskin) was signed by the Governor last April.

The largest Superfund site in the U.S. is the Sulphur Bank mercury mine at Clear Lake. I’d like to see many more sites designated. Cleanup work might even contribute some  economic stimulus to rural California. We have got to protect our water.

Incredibly, this story has only been in the New York Times and not one state paper (UPDATE: The SacBee apparently had something on this back in September; there are some choice quotes in it from the Governor and other lawmakers, Democrats too, who basically have the attitude “screw the prisoners, we’re building!”  Um, isn’t there a little bit of the Constitution which might not be totally trashed yet about “cruel and unusual punishment”?).  Apparently hundreds of inmates and employees at Pleasant Valley Prison in Coalinga have taken ill, and many are dying, from a fungal infection called “valley fever”:

At least a dozen inmates here in Central California have died from the disease, which is on the rise in other Western states, including Arizona, where the health department declared an epidemic after more than 5,500 cases were reported in 2006, including 33 deaths […]

In most cases, the infection starts in the lungs and is usually handled by the body without permanent damage. But serious complications can arise, including meningitis; and, at Pleasant Valley, the scope of the outbreak has left some inmates permanently disabled, confined to wheelchairs and interned in expensive long-term hospital stays.

About 80 prison employees have also contracted the fever, Pleasant Valley officials say, including a corrections officer who died of the disease in 2005.

The infection is caused by spores that are located in the soil, and any disturbance kicks them up into the air where they are inhaled.  It does not appear that the valley fever outbreak is a result of prison overcrowding, though overdevelopment of the surrounding area, particularly the building of a new hospital, appears to have played a role.  But it does indicate the little pitfalls of building our way out of this crisis.

Last fall, heeding advice from local health officials and a federal receiver charged with improving the state’s prison medical care, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation delayed plans to add 600 new beds out of concern that the construction might stir up more spores […]

The delayed expansion here was part of a $7.9 billion plan signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last summer to relieve overcrowding in the state’s prisons. Pleasant Valley was built in 1994 to house 2,000 inmates.

Pleasant Valley was built at the height of the “prison boom,” and though valley fever has been known to the area for eons, nobody stopped to wonder whether a prison with lots of dirt floors outside in an area where windy conditions blow fungal infections hither and thither would present a health risk.  That’s because communities like this need prisons to survive economically.

(In the case of Coalinga, the biggest penned-in population are cows, actually.  You see thousands of herds of cattle as you go up the I-5.  I can’t help but think that their waste product contributes to this)

Well come on down, because the Department of Mental Health is desperate for a few good professionals.  The state built a fancy, state-of-the-art mental health hospital, but they forgot one thing…where are they going to get staff? You see, this brand-spanking new hospital is in Coalinga.  Coalinga you ask?  Yes, it’s in Fresno County, about 70 miles outside of the city of Fresno and right smack dab between SF and LA.  Approximatel 3.5 hours from both, and a couple hours from Bakersfield.  It seems, for some reason, mental health professionals aren’t flocking to come live in Coalinga.

Jackie Speier, one of my favorite state senators (perhaps b/c she is my senator…), wasn’t so impressed with the planning on this one:

“Talk about wasteful spending,” said Sen. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough, who is closely involved in overseeing prison issues. She called the hospital a fiasco that, in her view, is a perfect symbol of the state’s poor planning and poor use of resources. “It is just irresponsible not to use this facility,” Speier said.(SF Chron 9/18/06)

You know, I understand the temptation to put these facilities out in the middle of the Central Valley.  But you have to consider staffing it!  As Rob Cordry would say, “I mean Come On!”. Sacramento Geniuses…right Arnold?