Repairing a river in lead country

DESLOGE, Mo. -- Al Agnew is a child of the Big River. Having lived within a few miles of the river for most of his life, it is a part of him, part of his past.

Agnew is reclining in the back of a canoe floating down a central leg of the 150-mile Missouri waterway, which cuts northeast through St. Francois and Jefferson counties until it spills into the Meramec River. The 52-year-old Agnew now fishes for the small-mouth bass and sunfish that an 8-year-old Agnew sought and caught decades before. Unfortunately, along this stretch of river those fish just aren't here in the numbers they used to be.

As the river bends, Agnew sees scenes of his childhood preserved in the unchanged surface of the landscape. The pool where as an invincible 14-year-old, he nearly drowned. He passes the banks where he and his friends used to fish and camp.

But while the face of Agnew's childhood landmarks seem the same, he knows that beneath the water, his mother river is slowly dying. The river bottom is now devoid of much of its smaller forms of life. No snails, no crayfish, little for larger bass and sunfish to feed on -- no reason for great numbers of those fish to stay.

The river shows scars of its troubled past. In addition to the typical gravel bars and brush, Agnew's canoe must occasionally navigate around small, soda-can-sized cylinders sticking out midstream. At first glance, they appear to be hollow ends of a submerged tree branch, but when Agnew taps one with his wooden oar it sounds a dull clank. They're the corroded metal casings from lead test drillings decades before. On the banks, rusted drainage pipes intermingle with exposed tree roots and spew water from the now-flooded lead mines beyond.

This part of the country is know as the "old lead belt," and in the early 1900s there were six lead mines near this stretch of the Big River. In the 1960s and 1970s the barren mines were abandoned, but when the miners left, they left behind tons of waste. This refuse -- or tailings -- is a fine powder that was washed from the exhumed ore and left in surface piles along the river. Due to flooding and erosion, these tailings have been finding their way into the river for decades. Other than Desloge, there are three sites in and around Park Hills that run into the Big River through the Flat River. There is also one at Bonne Terre and another at Leadwood.

This is not news. The danger of the river's lead content has been well documented since 1964, when the Missouri Department of Conservation identified a 35-mile stretch of the Big River as the most polluted water in the Meramec River Basin, which is between St. Louis and Ste. Genevieve. In the 1990s, the Environmental Protection Agency classified the Big River mine tailings sites as part of its Superfund program -- which locates, investigates and cleans up the worst sites of hazardous waste nationwide -- when studies showed that dust created by wind erosion was contaminating the surrounding area and was potentially hazardous to the nearly 23,000 people residing within four miles of the Desloge site.

But a more recent study by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources has uncovered another, more subtle problem as a result of the tailings. It determined that in addition to the pollution of the water, the fine chalky sediment itself was creating its own problems on the bed of the Big River.

Signs of danger

In the summer, the Big River is clogged canoe to canoe with people who come from all around to enjoy the river's floating and fishing. But as summer wanes, Agnew and his fellow river natives slowly retake the waters as their own.

With the flick of his wrist, Agnew lets fly his handmade treble-hook lure. The whir of the lure cutting through the air ends with a plop into the river, followed fast by the light gurgle of the bait plowing through the top layer of water as it is reeled in. If nothing bites, Agnew simply resets and repeats.

Whir, plop, gurgle, snag and splash. Agnew's got a bite.

"This is part of what I was talking about," Agnew says as his pulls a good-sized green sunfish from the river. The fish does not seem deformed, but upon closer examination Agnew points out a blackened spot on the tail of the fish. This is a feature that any longtime fisherman of the Big River will tell you is only a recent occurrence in the fish that remain. They say it is a result of the tailings, and the increased amount of the lead-laced silt that has spilt into this river.

Agnew is not a scientist. He is a professional wildlife artist.

In fact, while conservationists agree that the black spots on tails are an unusual occurrence in these fish, there is no scientific evidence that they are caused by lead contamination. But there are plenty of biological and environmental studies that have shown a dangerous presence of lead-laced silt in the Big River.

In 1977, the tailings made headlines when heavy rains caused about 50,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediment to slide off the 600-acre Desloge tailings pile into the river. Subsequent studies by the department of conservation found elevated lead levels in fish downstream. Today, the department has released public advisories against eating sunfish and sucker fish caught from the Big River. That's why when Agnew is finished examining his black-tailed catch, he simply returns it to the river.

The DNR's 2002-2003 biological assessment and fine sediment study found the concentrations of dissolved lead and other elements in the water did not exceed the limits for acceptable water quality standards, although they were noticeably increased. But it did conclude that the sediment itself was affecting the river and its inhabitants.

Underlying problem

"We always knew about the problem growing up," Agnew says as he ties on another lure. "But it is only when I went out and saw other rivers that I realized how big a problem it really was."

Even upstream in his own Big River, Agnew can see it. The upper leg of the river, like most Ozark streams, is embedded with loose gravel and stones, under which mussels, snails and other plainly visible invertebrates live. But as he travels southward, past the Desloge access, that loose stone is replaced with underwater dunes, fine sediment, residue from the mine tailings. According to DNR environmentalists, this sediment is choking the life out of Big River.

The DNR's 2002-2003 biological assessment and fine sediment study found that several types of dominant organisms were "conspicuously absent" from Big River. Environmental specialist Randy Sarver of the DNR said the reason for this is twofold: First, the sediment itself is more toxic than the water around it, and second, the mere presence of the sediment is a problem, having filled in the pools and the crags and crannies in the river bottom where those organisms normally live.

The combination of these has not only wiped out several types of organisms in parts of the river, but it is threatening repercussions up the food chain. Sarver said that either the loss of habitat or acute toxic contamination has resulted in these disappearances, limiting the food supply and jeopardizing the larger fish in the river. Add to that the fact that the smaller organisms that do survive on the river bottom are probably contaminated, sending that toxicity on up the food chain.

That worries department of conservation fisheries management biologist Kevin Meneau.

"The habitat has been changed," Meneau said. "It's concerning because it upsets the whole balance of things in the river."

Meneau has studied the Big River for the past 18 years. He said that if the tailing piles are stabilized to keep more sediment from spilling into the river, there's a possibility that the silt already in the river will go downstream and spread out. But if they are not stabilized and the river continues to take on the tailings, a big spill like that in 1977 could cause a wholesale failure of the river, essentially suffocating the life out of it.

What's to be done

Later in Agnew's fishing day, with the canoe and rods loaded in the back of his truck, he kneels over the enemy, which is anything but fallen. It's an exposed mound of whitish-pink dust on a hillside that overlooks the river. The surface of the mound of silt looks like a model of a barren southern Utah valley, the wind having cut miniature buttes into the landscape. As Agnew picks up a pinch of the substance, the wind tosses granules into the air, down toward the water below. He shakes his head.

There is a solution and plan to implement changes. Environment specialist Bob Hinkson with the DNR Superfund division said that two of the six piles have already been stabilized. Over the past few years, the piles at Desloge and at Bonne Terre have already been regraded to be more level in order to reduce the probability of sediment slide into river. Furthermore, the Bonne Terre site received a layer of topsoil and vegetation to help reduce wind erosion. But the process is expensive, around $5 million per pile. The federal Superfund that was once paid for by oil taxes is now only backed through general revenue, which is more limited.

Beyond problems with funding, the main concern is finding people to take charge of the projects. Hinkson said that the Doe Run Resources Co. -- which is the reincarnation of St. Joe Minerals Corp., the original owner of the mines -- has been helping with the work on the first two piles. But as Hinkson said, they can't do everything at once. He said at this rate, the next pile down the river at Park Hills may be addressed within the next year.

Hinkson's co-worker, Gail Wilson, is in charge of coming up with the final plan for the Big River's recovery, which is currently in the works. She said that although the plan itself is far from completion, when it is finally approved the key to getting these things done is usually finding a watershed group of volunteers from the area who have an interest or concern about the river.

Agnew definitely qualifies. For three generations, Agnew family members have fished and floated the Big River. Today, Agnew takes his niece and nephew downstream to share their inherited natural recreational resource. It is for their sake and that of following generations that he wants to see Big River endure.

"I grew up on this river," says Agnew, listening to the wind howl through the trees around him. "I would hate to see it die."

trehagen@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 137