Photographs of variously mutated brown trout were relegated to an appendix of a scientific study commissioned by the J. R. Simplot Company, whose mining operations have polluted nearby creeks in southern Idaho. The trout were the offspring of local fish caught in the wild that had been spawned in the laboratory. Some had two heads; others had facial, fin and egg deformities. Yet the company’s report concluded that it would be safe to allow selenium — a metal byproduct of mining that is toxic to fish and birds — to remain in area creeks at higher levels than are now permitted under regulatory guidelines. The company is seeking a judgment to that effect from the Environmental Protection Agency. After receiving a draft report that ran hundreds of pages, an E.P.A. review described the research as “comprehensive” and seemed open to its findings, which supported the selenium variance for Simplot’s Smoky Canyon mine. But when other federal scientists and some environmentalists learned of the two-headed brown trout, they raised a ruckus, which resulted in further scientific review that found the company’s research wanting. Now, several federal agencies, an array of environmental groups and one of the nation’s largest private companies are at odds over selenium contamination from the Idaho phosphate mine, the integrity of the company’s research, and what its effect will be on future regulatory policy. The implications extend beyond Idaho. Selenium is a pollutant at 200 of the 1,294 locations designated by the federal government as toxic Superfund sites. And even though its effects on wildlife have been known for decades, federal agencies have not been able to agree on what level should be prohibited. The E.P.A. is currently reviewing federal selenium rules. After hearing about the mutant trout, Senator Barbara Boxer of California, the Democrat who heads the chamber’s Environment and Public Works Committee, asked the federal Fish and Wildlife Service to step in and vet the mining company’s scientific research and conclusions. The service’s review, released last month, was scathing, describing the study as “biased” and “highly questionable.” Joseph Skorupa, the service’s selenium expert, cited a “lack of valid field controls” and the absence of any analysis of the selenium’s impact on reptiles, birds or the 12 other types of fish in the creeks’ waters. Most troubling, he wrote, was that the researchers systematically undermeasured the rate of serious deformities in baby fish, which were pictured only in an appendix. Dr. Skorupa wrote that the Simplot report did not provide raw data that would enable him to independently calculate deformity rates. He estimated, however, that the level of selenium that Simplot says causes a 20 percent rate of deformity actually causes a deformity rate of a minimum of 70 percent of all fry. Asked about the wildlife service’s findings, Alan L. Prouty, Simplot’s vice president for environmental and regulatory affairs, declined to comment beyond saying that the agency’s review was “totally outside the regulatory process.” He added that his company’s research was conducted with the guidance of the E.P.A. and other government agencies. Senator Boxer said that she was not seeking to take sides on Simplot’s variance request, but that she wanted the government to get the science right because it could effect national standards on selenium. According to an E.P.A. document provided to The New York Times by the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, a local conservation group that has been battling Simplot over contamination for years, the trout data from the Smoky Canyon study has already been included in a “national criterion document” — a larger database used to help establish those standards. Selenium is a naturally occurring element that, when disturbed, can be released as a toxic byproduct of human activities like farming, mining and burning coal. The regulation of selenium pollution is, for example, a highly contested issue in mountaintop coal mining in West Virginia and in agriculture in the San Joaquin Valley in California. The metal can also affect human health, with symptoms including hair and fingernail loss and numbness in fingers and toes. It has been regulated in drinking water since the 1970s. But the metal is far more dangerous to aquatic egg-bearing animals like fish, birds and reptiles — a fact revealed in the early 1980s when excessive selenium in agricultural runoff resulted in fatal deformities in waterfowl at the Kesterson Reservoir in California, including missing eyes and feet, deformed beaks, legs and wings, and protruding brains.
