Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/556850
ByMatthewBrown, Michael Biesecker and P. Solomon Banda The Associated Press SILVERTON, COLORADO It will take many years and many millions of dol- lars simply to manage and not even remove the toxic wastewater from an aban- doned mine that unleashed a 100-mile-long torrent of heavy metals into West- ern rivers and has likely reached Lake Powell, ex- perts said. Plugging Colorado's Gold King Mine could sim- ply lead to an eventual ex- plosion of poisonous water elsewhere, so the safest so- lution, they said Thursday, would be to install a treat- ment plant that would in- definitely clean the water from Gold King and three other nearby mines. It would cost millions of dol- lars, and do nothing to con- tain the thousands of other toxic streams that are a per- manent legacy of mining across the nation. Federal authorities first suggested a treatment plant for Gold King more than a decade ago, but local offi- cials and owners of a nearby mine were reluctant to em- brace a federally sponsored cleanup. "They have been not pur- suing the obvious solution," said Rob Robinson, a retired abandoned mines cleanup coordinator for the U.S. Bu- reau of Land Management. "My hope is this has embar- rassed the hell out of them and they're going to finally take it seriously." The Gold King delay il- lustrates a problem dwarf- ing the 3 million-gallon waste plume accidentally released by contractors working for the U.S. En- vironmental Protection Agency: There are about 500,000 abandoned mines nationwide, and only a frac- tion have been dealt with, despite decades of effort. EPA has estimated the cost of cleaning up aban- doned mines nationwide, not including coal mines, at between $20 billion and $54 billion. Many of the abandoned mines — including in the Silverton area where Gold King is located — were de- veloped after an 1872 fed- eral mining law encouraged development and allowed people to lay claim to min- erals beneath public lands. They have since become legacies of the industry's boom-bust cycles, in which companies fold up opera- tions when metals prices fall, leaving behind sources of toxic wastewater that chronically leave rivers bar- ren and taint drinking wa- ter supplies. Of the abandoned mines in the U.S., more than 48,000 had been inven- toried through the BLM's Abandoned Mine Lands program, which began after new federal laws focused on environmental protec- tion in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. But only about one in five of the inventoried mines is being cleaned up or re- quires no more action. More than 38,000 await further analysis or work, according to the bureau. Under the federal Clean Water Act, the mine owner is supposed to control dis- charges, but Gold King's landowner, Todd Hennis, is not considered legally responsible for the cleanup because the mine stopped operating in 1923, long be- fore the modern era of envi- ronmental protection. "A lot of these are Mom and Pops, they've inher- ited the property or they bought it years ago before the environmental laws were passed, and they just don't have the resources," said Doug Jamison, with the hazardous materials division at Colorado's state health department. In Colorado alone, there are hundreds, possibly thousands of abandoned mines discharging acid rock drainage, Jamison said. The potent stew of heavy metals accumulates as chemical reactions brew up sulfuric acid at concen- trations high enough to dis- solve steel, and leach poi- sons down mountainsides and into groundwater de- cades after mines close. The EPA announced Thursday that surface-wa- ter testing in Colorado re- vealed very high levels of lead, arsenic, cadmium and other heavy metals in the middle of the sickly yellow plume released on Aug. 5. These metals far exceeded government exposure limits for aquatic life and humans in the hours after the spill. The EPA said its analy- sis shows the heavy metals quickly returned to "pre- event levels" once the plume passed through the area it tested, on the Animas River between Silverton and the municipal water intake for Durango, a downstream city of 16,000. Colorado's stretch of the river reopened Friday to rafting and kayaking — an important part of the region's tourist economy. State health officials said they do not expect adverse health effects from expo- sure to metals detected in the water and riverbed but reminded people to wash their hands and clothes af- ter being in contact with river water. Utah officials said Thurs- day that the plume had likely reached Lake Pow- ell, although it has been di- luted on the 300-mile jour- ney to the reservoir and lost the bright yellow color seen closer to the site. Authori- ties could not immediately confirm the presence of heavy metals and other con- taminants close to the lake and said tests on Utah river water suggest the spill has dissipated enough that the water is safe to drink and officials aren't expecting to see fish dying off at the lake. The state continued to warn people not to use it for irrigation or livestock water, however, Utah De- partment of Environmen- tal Quality spokeswoman Donna Spangler. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, who took full responsibility and promised that the agency will pay for any damage, said Thursday that these results show the river is "restoring itself." She also announced that the EPA has released $500,000 to help supply clean wa- ter for crop irrigation and livestock in northwestern New Mexico. Absent technological breakthroughs, the EPA ex- pects to be treating water at abandoned mines for gen- erations. "Mine sites continually produce more waste," said John Hillenbrand, reme- dial project manager with the EPA's Superfund pro- gram in California. California's 150-year- old Iron Mountain mine discharged six tons of toxic sludge a day before a cleanup by the EPA, which declared it a Superfund site in 1983, 20 years after it shut down. The sludge caused massive fish kills in the Sacramento River sys- tem, which supplies a fifth of the state's water, more than 30 times. Authorities now spend $5 million a year to remove poisons, and ex- pects to keep at it forever. HEAVY METALS Colorado spill a blip in legacy of leaking abandoned mines BRENNANLINSLEY—THEASSOCIATEDPRESS Water flows through a series of sediment retention ponds built to reduce heavy metal and chemical contaminants from the Gold King Mine wastewater accident, in the spillway about 1/4 mile downstream from the mine, outside Silverton, Colo., on Friday. | NEWS | REDBLUFFDAILYNEWS.COM SATURDAY, AUGUST 15, 2015 12 A