Muskrat Falls fish supply faces poisonous threat

LOCAL FISH SUPPLY THREATENED BY POISONOUS METHYLMERCURY

Maybe you think there is a boy who cried wolf problem with aboriginal protest against big infrastructure projects. I am not going to try to talk you out of it. But I am finding myself increasingly interested in the conflict at the proposed Muskrat Falls hydroelectric site in Labrador. And it’s because both sides seem to agree that there is a real wolf here.

The wolf is methylmercury, which is what you might call a canonical industrial poison. Every inorganic chemist knows it is on a short list of substances you get your running shoes on at the mention of. And every student of environmental health learns about the Minamata disease incident in Japan before the first midterm. (They then learn about the “second Minimata disease,” which happened when another Japanese factory made the same mistake of releasing methylmercury into another river about a decade later.) It is easy to get confused about the various substances that are used to cause alarm with certain segments of the public, but heavy metals are in a class by themselves and methylmercury is in a special class within that class.

There are no chemical plants involved in the Muskrat Falls controversy. The problem is pervasive mercury spewed into the sea and air, in microscopic amounts, by human industrial activity around the world. This mercury is methylated naturally by bacteria living on, and near, the surface of rivers like the Churchill, which runs over Muskrat Falls and into the Lake Melville estuary where the Innu and Inuit catch fish and seals.

This process, in turn, forms a layer of mercury-inundated water and soil, a sort of heavy metal scum that runs downriver and bioaccumulates in the tissue of creatures higher up on the marine food chain.

Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health, led by Canadian scholar Elsie Sunderland, published a paper last year that studied mercury accumulation in the watershed and concluded that there would probably be a one-time methylmercury “pulse” from a new dam on Muskrat Falls. The intensity of the pulse is uncertain. Nalcor, the provincial energy company that is building the dam, has produced its own low estimates. But it would be likely to last up to a generation.

When I heard about all this in connection with the continuing 11th-hour protests at Muskrat Falls, I thought, well, perhaps Nalcor and the Newfoundland government think there are problems with the research.

In fact, the ever-lurching provincial government and its dysfunctional corporate arm seem to agree that there is a problem — it is just too late for them to do anything about it other than to measure it after it is created.

Nalcor had already planned to remove trees from the land to be drowned by the new reservoir, but vegetation doesn’t seem to have much to do with the problem. In the view of biologists, it is the topsoil near the shore of the river that should, ideally, be removed altogether. Newfoundland Environment Minister Perry Trimper said as much to the CBC on Oct. 18, agreeing that, “The majority of the source of methylmercury does come from the organic (matter) in the soil.”

The Newfoundland government seems to have a strong plan for monitoring mercury levels downstream of the dam after the reservoir is flooded. So it’s simple, says Nick Whalen, the Liberal MP for St. John’s East, who tweeted on Sunday, “Just measure MeHg (methylmercury) levels, eat less fish while MeHg levels are too high, and compensate.”

Perhaps this is an example of the “reconciliation” with aboriginal peoples we are hearing so much about. Yes, this industrial boondoggle may poison your traditional food supply — so, duh, eat less fish!

In a bizarre twist, Trimper announced on Oct. 19 that he would have Nalcor fund a further study by Sunderland and her group, but when the CBC called Harvard, the university said it was the first it was hearing of it and that it doesn’t make much sense. This, in turn, has led to a weird little correspondence battle, as yet unresolved, involving Trimper and Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust.

This cannot be healthy for the modicum of good faith that the Newfoundland government had established with the relevant First Nations. The local aboriginal authorities were playing along with the monitor the harm approach, and Innu Nation leadership even disapproved gently of the sit-ins at the site. But now individuals of all ethnicities who fish in Lake Melville have to be wondering why the province is acting so schizoid. And Whalen’s grouchy intervention threatens to drag in the federal Liberal government, politically if not legally. How long before cries of “Wolf! Wooolfff!” reach the prime minister’s ears?