The Utah Division of Water Quality needs to hold US Magnesium accountable for groundwater contamination
We encourage everyone to reach out to the Utah Department of Environmental Quality on this issue. Feel free to sample or borrow from our comments in your messages to them.
Director, DEQ: Tim Davis, tim.davis@utah.gov, (801) 247-3940
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UPHE’s Comments:
30 years ago the EPA declared Mag. Corp the worst industrial polluter in the country. At the time, EPA said, Magcorp’s pollution “not only accounted for 92% of toxics released to Utah’s air but also for 73% of all toxics released to Utah’s overall environment of land, air and water.”
So I’m concerned and frankly bewildered why the DWQ appears to be uninterested in finding out how much of the toxic disaster that has been the Mag. Corp site for the last 50 years has found its way to Great Salt Lake. Among the toxins released from the plant were numerous organochlorides, including dioxins, furans, hexachlorobenzene, and PCBs. These were considered the most toxic industrial chemicals to human health ever produced, until they were recently eclipsed by forever chemicals.
Knowledgeable people believe it is not safe to be in the area without hazmat suits. The atmosphere above the plant smells like chlorine gas. This area is obviously upwind of the Wasatch Front. Two years ago we learned that the halogens emitted from the plant were responsible for up to 25% of the Wasatch Front’s winter time PM2.5 problem. It is certainly intuitive that a plant with that much impact on our air pollution could have a similarly massive effect on ground water contamination.
Toxicity from multiple environmental contaminants is cumulative in that many of them involve common biological pathways. Dioxins and PCBs from Mag Crop, combined with microplastics and PFAS compounds from sewage treatment plants that discharge into GSL, and mercury, lead, and arsenic, emitted from multiple discharge points from Rio Tinto, add Strontium, Cesium, thallium, and cyanobacteria–it’s death and disease from a thousand cuts, and Mag. Corp’s toxins are likely a big part of those thousand cuts.
For years the plant illegally managed its toxic waste using open-air, earthen ditches and ponds. It was declared a Superfund site in 2009. The Utah DEQ announced in 2016 that the company’s toxic waste was leaking into groundwater underneath the plant and into GSL. As I understand it, the groundwater discharge permit and a consent decree with the EPA required the building of a barrier wall. That wall is far from finished and work has stopped on it. And the salt cap that was supposed to prevent evaporation of toxins from the retention pond hasn’t been created either. That plan depends on there being enough water in the lake to operate the plant’s pumps, and that appears to be in jeopardy.
The half life of TCDD (dioxin) and PCBs are between 10 and 20 years, for most heavy metals it’s infinite. The bottom line is that it is possible, if not highly likely, that many of the most dangerous toxins known are already found in the GSL ecosystem from this environmental catastrophe, and already in GSL dust from the area near the plant, despite the plant not currently operating. And if the lake continues to shrink even more toxins could become airborne and make it to the Wasatch Front exposing 2.5 million people.
So in short, it is bewildering why the Division of Water Quality is apparently uninterested in holding US Magnesium accountable, or even investigating the possibility of ground water contamination expanding, including into the lake and dry lake bed.