SILVERTON — The EPA’s promised big cleanup of toxic mines is beginning with baby steps — quick fixes to fish-killing leaks improvised outside the Superfund process — amid worries that work on one of the West’s worst water problems will stall.
EPA crews in southwestern Colorado swiftly stopped an acidic, 15 gallons-a-minute flow from the defunct Brooklyn Mine, drainage that for decades has injected heavy arsenic, cadmium, lead, manganese and zinc into Animas River headwaters. That’s a tiny portion of the overall 3,750 gallons-a-minute contaminating the Animas, but is typical of the trickling from thousands of mines that slowly kills Western streams — even as clean water increasingly is coveted.
“It took half a day. All we did was redirect the adit flow so that it didn’t cross waste rock,” EPA Superfund project manager Rebecca Thomas said.
This quick-fix approach reflects regional EPA officials fighting to prevent paralysis in the area where an EPA-led crew caused the Gold King disaster in 2015, a mistake that dramatized the problem of acid mine drainage by turning the Animas mustard-yellow. Now EPA cleanup specialists face the practical reality that the nation’s ailing Superfund program for rectifying environmental disasters may not be able to deliver. Federal cleanups of toxic mining Superfund sites typically take decades due to bureaucracy and scarce funds.
EPA officials have proposed 40 “early-response” fixes spanning 20 of the mine sites in the mountains above Silverton. If locals approve — public meetings are scheduled next week — EPA crews would embark on these small-scale projects to create ponds that slow drainage so that contaminants drop out, to reroute snow and rain run-off away from waste rock, and to remove tailings that slump into streams and ooze poison.
The investigation and planning for a full Superfund cleanup still would continue, once EPA chiefs and Congress allocate funds. But the overall cleanup here at 46 sites across the newly designated, 60-square-mile Bonita Peak Mining District Superfund site is complicated and costly. It requires mapping a vast underground maze of drilled tunnels and natural fissures, inserting concrete plugs and installing water-cleaning systems. EPA crews also would have to dispose of thousands of cubic yards of metals-laced sludge each year, spreading it in waste pits or possibly injecting it into super-deep bore holes to serve as a buffer and hold acidic mining wastewater inside dormant mine tunnels.
“These early response actions would be quick, relatively inexpensive and yet result in what we think would be a very positive benefit for the environment and the surface water drainages that feed into the Animas River,” Thomas said.
The strategy has emerged as local leaders raise concerns about the Superfund process — for which automatic funding ended in the 1990s — and the impact of President Donald Trump’s proposed EPA budget cuts. Those cuts could hurt state programs to monitor water quality and complete a detailed inventory of toxic mines. However, Trump also has said he favors cleaner air and water.
When Silverton and San Juan County officials last year reversed their long opposition to embrace a federal disaster designation and cleanup, they repeatedly emphasized their greatest fear: that locals would be left in a lurch waiting for the job to be done in their lifetimes.
“At least they are doing something,” San Juan County commissioner Scott Fetchenhier said of the EPA’s proposed early action. At the Brooklyn Mine site, fish already may be making a comeback, he said. “If you can knock off low-hanging fruit … maybe it doesn’t even need to be part of a Superfund site anymore,” he said, confirming that EPA officials have provided a list of proposed quick fix projects.
“But cutting the funding for the EPA by 25 percent? Is that going to help projects like this? That is definitely a worry,” he said. “This thing could go on forever. It’s going to take some big money.”
San Juan County administrator William Tookey said the worst fears could become reality.
“Those concerns are still out there, especially with the change in the administration,” he said.
Environment groups say they will be working to keep acid mine drainage from fading as a priority.
“We absolutely view the issue of mining pollution as a significant and urgent problem here in Colorado,” Conservation Colorado water advocate Kristin Green said. “It’s a really large issue that has to be addressed at both the state and federal level, and we’re seeing the proposed budget cuts at the federal level.”
Less money for EPA could reduce Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment testing of water quality in streams and slow completion of a toxic mines inventory to guide cleanups at thousands of the worst leaking mines, Green said. Next year, Conservation Colorado will push state-level legislation to require mining companies to post sufficient bond money to guarantee proper postmining restoration.
In Washington, D.C., Earthworks advocates lamented that legislation Sens. Michael Bennet and Cory Gardner mulled to promote cleanups has fizzled.
“We have identified a major problem in the lack of funding for cleanup. And we’re unlikely to see any reclamation fee on the mining industry during a Trump administration and the 115th Congress,” Earthworks policy director Lauren Pagel said. “We’re also seeing that this administration would like to seriously cut the budgets of the EPA and the Department of the Interior, two agencies that have cobbled together money to clean up abandoned mines. What that means is you’re not going to see the pace of mine cleanups increase. Mines that currently are polluting water are going to keep polluting water, even at Superfund sites. That’s not a good thing for water quality in the West.”
Beyond the quick fixes, EPA and southwestern Colorado officials also are working to create a scientific research center in Silverton that they envision as a hub for hydrology research to improve water quality at mining sites.
“We are moving forward with an Earth Science Center,” town manager Michelle Hamilton said, noting that a planner is considering sites. “We need to create some viable industries here.”
And EPA contractors have figured out how to extend the life of a temporary water treatment plant below the Gold King Mine. It has filtered out acidic heavy metals contamination, reducing harm to the Cement Creek tributary of the Animas, generating annually about 6,000 cubic yards of sludge. San Juan County and Silverton leaders, backed by Gov. John Hickenlooper, insisted that the plant must keep operating throughout the Superfund process to minimize harm until ultimate solutions are implemented.
Next week, EPA officials plan to hold public meetings with residents in Silverton, Durango and Farmington, N.M., for discussion of both the quick fixes and long-term cleanup.
“Funding is a question,” said Thomas, the EPA project manager. “We certainly will be requesting money this year. We will start the work as soon as the funding is available — no earlier than probably the fourth quarter this year.”
Yet tangible progress can be made sooner, she said.
“I’m very optimistic. This is a high-visibility project. The work that we do in this district could be used as a template for hundreds, if not thousands, of abandoned mines across the Rocky Mountain West. There’s a lot of energy here at the EPA, and also at the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service, to make sure we do the right thing and see some improvement in environmental quality. I’m more optimistic than trepidacious for sure,” Thomas said.
“Superfund activities are core to the EPA’s mission.”
