Playing politics with lake

By Launce Rake

Sunday, April 23, 2006 | 7:26 a.m.

The scientist who headed federal studies into harmful chemicals being released into Lake Mead from Las Vegas sewage says he quit his job because his findings have been suppressed for political reasons.

Timothy Gross, a biologist who conducted eight years of research for the U.S. Geological Survey, said last week that data showing alarming changes in three species of fish has been kept under wraps because the results could curtail development in Southern Nevada.

Lake Mead provides almost all of the drinking water for Las Vegas.

"They've been sitting on this for two years," Gross said. "They don't like the conclusions ... We've been told specifically the issues are too sensitive, that it would inhibit economic development in the area."

Officials and scientists with the Geological Survey and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which has joined in the research, did not dispute Gross' scientific findings. But they denied that it has been suppressed or that he quit his job as a result.

Geological Survey spokeswoman Barbara Wainman of the agency's Washington office said Gross was fired in unspecified disciplinary actions last month. Wainman said release of the data at this time would be premature.

Gross is a researcher and instructor at the University of Florida. Studies he supervised of the lake's carp, large-mouth bass and the endangered razorback sucker show mixed sexual characteristics and reduced sperm quality in male fish.

Those changes are likely the result of exposure to a stew of chemicals in and near the Las Vegas Wash. Las Vegas' treated sewage is released into the wash, which flows into Lake Mead at Las Vegas Bay, upstream from the intakes that bring water back to the city.

Gross said it is not clear whether the chemicals, among them pharmaceutical compounds passed from people and through the sewer system into Lake Mead, would harm people who use water from the lake. The compounds are commonly known as hormone disrupters and exist in a range of household products, industrial byproducts and medicines such as birth control pills.

More than 90 percent of the water in the regional municipal systems comes from Lake Mead, and about 25 million people and millions of acres of agriculture in the Southwest depends at least in part on the lower Colorado River basin.

Gross said that the plume of chemicals passes through the Las Vegas Wash and into the lake. Ordinarily, the outflow is far enough away from water intakes to eliminate any problem. The drought has changed that, though, he said.

"I question whether the water is adequately protected," Gross said.

J.C. Davis, a spokesman for the Southern Nevada Water Authority, dismissed Gross' concerns. He said there is no human health threat from the treated Lake Mead water his agency pumps to consumers.

"In the Las Vegas Wash, the concentrations that they've found have generally been in the parts-per-trillion range," Davis said. "Our drinking water intakes are protected by depth and by distance."

Davis said ozone treatment systems, which came online for the water system in 2002, provide an additional layer of protection. While ozone treatment was designed to kill microbes, one side effect is that it also effectively destroys hormone disrupters.

"This is not a drinking water issue," Davis said. "This is an environmental, aquatic species issue."

This issue was important enough that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada earmarked money for research on it in 1998. Interior Secretary Gale Norton added $2.5 million - in proceeds from federal land sales in Southern Nevada - for additional study in 2004. Gross was principal investigator throughout that period. He said that in January 2005, frustrated by the lack of progress in publishing the research results, he submitted a resignation letter to the agency.

Wainman said it was Gross' failure and not the result of Geological Survey management that the data has not been publicly released.

"The principal investigator is responsible for drafting a report and getting it through the peer-review process," Wainman said. "He has not done that," and the work remains incomplete.

"To say that we're suppressing his science - that's not the way we operate," she said.

Robert Burrows, assistant district chief for the agency, said scientists are now "collecting more, new data and expanding the study to do a better job of understanding what's going on.

"No scientist whom I'm aware of in my entire career has ever allowed any kind of political pressure to bias his or her research," Burrows said.

Gross said his research was blocked by managers before the peer-review stage at an early step called policy review. "Within the federal system it's getting ever more difficult to publish things," he said.

"Sen. Reid's staff has asked us multiple times in the last several years to give them a briefing. We've been denied the ability to go to the senator and give him this data."

Reid helped secure at least $250,000 for research on Lake Mead's water supplies. That funding was augmented with another $2.5 million with proceeds from federal land sales around Las Vegas.

Among the damage Gross said he found is a 30 percent to 40 percent reduction in sperm function and quality in the fish. Documents provided to the Sun from a 2004 conference appear to substantiate Gross' claims.

The additional research now under way is designed to dilute or contradict the data already collected, Gross said. He added that he was instructed to not answer the phone when called by newspaper reporters.

"We're finding more of this all the time," he said. "Basically, the agency doesn't want us to talk about these issues."

Gross drew a parallel to other cases in which the Bush administration appeared to affect scientific discussion at other federal agencies.

In one case, James Hansen, a NASA climatologist, acknowledged to be one of the leading researchers on global warming, said his agency's public affairs office pressured him to withhold or change his data to conform with White House doubts on the issue.

The U.S. Geological Survey has had recent credibility issues. Last year, allegations surfaced that agency employees had falsified data on how fast water can travel through Yucca Mountain and corrode canisters of nuclear waste. The allegations are still under review by the agency. Yucca Mountain is the site of a proposed dump for high-level radioactive debris 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Critics have charged that the administration also has inserted politics into discussions at the Food and Drug Administration over contraception, stem-cell research and, most recently, medical marijuana.

Wainman acknowledged that the issue of politics and science "is a hot topic right now," but said the other issues do not reflect the Geological Survey's approach to science.

"Frankly, we want to get something out there," she said. "It's not in our interest to not produce results right now. We've got a senior senator (Reid) that wants some answers."

Sharyn Stein, a spokeswoman for Reid's office, said the senator was not ready to condemn the Geological Survey. Reid, she said, found funding for the studies "because he thinks this is extremely important to the people of Southern Nevada."

The findings need to be peer-reviewed and published before the senator comments, she said. "We're hoping to see something published by this fall."

One scientist with a sister federal agency said Gross was a sound researcher but that the allegations of political suppression were out of place.

Erik Orsak, an environmental contaminant specialist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said there is evidence of impacts on sperm quality in the fish that Gross studied.

"From what I know about Dr. Gross, he's a very capable, competent scientist," Orsak said. "He's playing hardball. I think that's a function of his situation. He has been compromised. He's upset and doing what he can to respond."

Orsak said he saw "absolutely no evidence" that research results have been suppressed.

Cynthia Martinez, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service assistant field supervisor in Las Vegas, said her agency has a particular interest in the issue because of the effects of hormone disrupters on the razorback sucker. Migratory birds that are monitored by Fish and Wildlife also could be affected.

Martinez said Gross' description of the data was consistent with what her agency has documented.

"There is lower sperm quality in those fish that were collected from Las Vegas Bay as opposed to the control site, upstream in the Overton arm" of Lake Mead, she said. The bay is the point where the Las Vegas Wash enters the lake.

Martinez echoed the points lobbed by the Geological Survey.

"I think he (Gross) is a really good scientist. I think had he, as the P.I. (principal investigator) on that project, moved forward with writing the results and gotten it peer-reviewed, the research could have been released on a much sooner date than it is now," she said.

"You really want to make sure the science you've conducted is sound, especially on a sensitive subject such as endocrine disrupters."

Nonetheless, "we should have had a final report by now," Martinez said.