I have been avoiding fish ever since the mercury contamination levels have been made public. I don’t trust the government agencies to tell me the truth about acceptable mercury levels in my body or in fish. While I am skeptic, I am also a chemist, so I know how bad that mercury can be. Some of the mercury gets converted to methylmercury, which is deadly.

I mention all this because an article in the SF Chronicle about the clean up of the bay provided some rather startling information–at least to me. I’m not a native of California, and although I have been here now for nearly six years, I had no idea that there are two closed mercury mines in this area. One mine, the New Almaden Mine, is located in a Santa Clara County Park. This mine is somewhere in my area, since I live in Santa Clara Country. It also happens to have been world’s largest mercury mine. It is now a park. I may avoid the park. The second mine is in San Benito County. Both mines have leaked mercury into the San Francisco Bay.

I don’t know how many people fish the Bay for fun or sport, but I wouldn’t eat those fish. California is going to clean up the Bay, but it will take 70 years before the fish can be eaten. Seventy years! I won’t live to see edible fish from the San Francisco Bay. Very few of us will.

The contaminated fish don’t just harm people. They also harm birds who eat them. Currently 1,200 kilograms of mercury each year reaches the bay. The plan will remove 500 kilograms a year. How much mercury do you think is in this bird?

This beautiful body of water contains too much mercury. I know sailors who talk about how they won’t go in the water. they don’t even want to go into the water in a thermal wet suit, which is the only way to survive the frigid temperature of the water for more than 10 minutes. I knew the water was polluted, but I had no idea it was this bad. I know people fish the bay and eat those fish.

Those mercury mines aren’t the only polluters. Fifty sewage treament plants drain into the bay, as well as storm water from 76 cities and 15 industrial wastewater plants.

I still want to know why it will take 70 years. Government is notoriously slow when it comes to cleaning up pollution. Just check out the Superfund sites–some have not been cleaned up yet. Surely we have the capability of reducing the clean up time. It seems rather slow, or perhaps the Bay is incredibly polluted.

Apparently, environmental groups had to fight to get the clean up time reduced from over 100 years. Yet another reason to hate the oil companies:  they are very reluctant to provide information about their emissions and waste.