Plant may need to run for duration
O∞cials urge EPA to keep the water filtration system going until cleanup is done.
Acid sludge from the Gold King Mine has filled up waste bags at the Environmental Protection Agency’s emergency treatment plant on headwaters of the Animas River, forcing the federal agency to grapple with continued creek-cleaning and disposal.
And untreated muck laced with heavy metals from three nearby mines still drains — at an average rate of 640 gallons a minute. It’s the equivalent of two Gold King disasters every week contaminating water.
Gov. John Hickenlooper, Sen. Cory Gardner and local leaders for months have urged EPA officials to commit to keep this temporary plant running, and maybe expand it, until a federal Superfund cleanup of old mines is done.
But the EPA hasn’t made a decision. The agency “is looking at all those options,” Gold King project manager Rebecca Thomas said after a recent briefing in Silverton, 7 miles south of the plant.
Stopping new harm to Animas headwaters looms as the most basic challenge in these minepocked mountains, let alone cleanup and habitat restoration, as the EPA begins its process.
Other concerns Silverton and San Juan County officials have raised: They want the EPA to reimburse legal costs. The locals say the EPA reimbursed some costs incurred after the EPA triggered a 3 million-gallon disaster Aug. 5 but that locals are still out $100,000 for legal help needed while negotiating the scope of a planned cleanup.
Silverton Mountain ski area is seeking assurances the EPA will minimize the impact of truck traffic, dust and poor cellphone service during cleanup. Town and
county leaders also have asked the EPA to help handle agency emergency coverage as federal workers investigate and analyze dormant leaking mines.
When EPA crews fan out across the tundra this summer sampling soil, waste rock and streams, the locals reckon, an ambulance ought to be available. There are only two covering the county.
San Juan County Commissioners Ernie Kuhlman, Peter McKay and Scott Fetchenhier have been chewing on these issues and more as the EPA moves toward formally launching a cleanup. Because Silverton (population 400) is small and isolated, all local expenditures — minor road repairs, support for projects to try to revive a weak economy — are scrutinized closely, sometimes with commissioners debating for hours. It’s a tighter world, fundamentally dwarfed by the federal EPA and its multibillion-dollar budget.
Filtering waste
The stuffing of six multi-ton bladder bags with filtered mine waste became evident as snow melted this month and residents could see the EPA’s emergency treatment operations below the Gold King Mine. Kuhlman confronted EPA officials with his concerns: “What is the intent?”
EPA officials dropping in from Denver haven’t given an answer. The good news is that the treatment plant set up after the disaster has removed an estimated 2,500 to 3,000 cubic yards of metals-laced acid sludge that otherwise would have contaminated headwaters. EPA officials do not classify this material as hazardous, agency spokeswoman Christie St. Clair said.
The filtered-out acid metals muck is held in “de-watering bags” at the plant, St. Clair said. Some material filtered last fall has been put in a temporary impoundment near the plant.
“It will be temporarily stored near the onsite treatment facility until a suitable permanent location is identified,” St. Clair wrote in response to Denver Post queries. “Based on the results of sampling and analysis, the solids may be permanently stored on-site or transported off-site for disposal in an approved landfill.”
The Gold King Mine drains an acid mix of metals-laced muck at an average rate of 530 gallons per minute — the material that is filtered at the plant. An additional 640 gallons a minute drains into Cement Creek — untreated — from the nearby Mogul Mine, Red and Bonita Mine and the American Tunnel.
Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment officials, working with the EPA, were aware of the situation. “At some point, they will disconnect the bags” and dispose of the waste, CDPHE’s superfund unit director Doug Jamison said. “This is a huge issue for that water treatment facility,” Jamison said. “There’s just not a lot of room up there to do that without a different system.”
Hickenlooper has asked EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy to make sure the temporary treatment plant keeps running until cleanup is done, which can take decades.
“The governor continues to urge the EPA to expand the scope of this plant and continue to operate it throughout the cleanup process,” Hickenlooper spokeswoman Kathy Green said this week.
Gardner checked out the treatment plant and called it “essential to ensuring that the surrounding local communities have access to a safe water supply.” Gardner, too, is urging the EPA to expand the plant if necessary “and use it to the full capacity through the cleanup process.”
Reimbursing locals
The local leaders also are pressing for reimbursement, contending that, but for EPA blundering that caused the Gold King disaster, locals would not have needed lawyers.
“We would like to be paid. Who do I go to to find out?” Kuhlman said.
EPA project manager Thomas said: “We will certainly take your concerns back to the people in our office who are working on that issue.”
And the worries about emergency services arose when EPA officials announced that, with about 30 workers sampling this summer, they’ll likely need to have emergency service available.
“San Juan County shouldn’t be paying bills for the EPA. They caused the problem,” Kuhlman said at a recent commissioners meeting.
Commissioner Fetchenhier suggested the EPA might be able to help the country hire more paramedics. If not, Fetchenhier said, locals could inform the EPA “that you should be handling your own emergencies.”
Fetchenhier told fellow commissioners he’d discussed this issue with the EPA’s team. “We told them: ‘If you have 20 or 30 people in the field, you need to bring your own emergency services. We can’t afford to have our ambulances going out.’ ”
Downriver wells tainted
Beyond these immediate issues along the upper Animas around Silverton, downriver wells near Durango may be contaminated as a result of the disaster.
San Juan Basin Health officials said results from voluntary tests of domestic wells indicate one in 20 contains tainted water. Voluntary tests done at EPA expense at 400 wells showed that 5 percent were contaminated, health agency spokesman Brian Devine said. Main contaminants detected at elevated levels included manganese, iron, lead and arsenic, Devine said.
At those homes, filters have been installed at costs ranging from $200 to $2,000, reimbursed to the homeowners, Devine said. A few people may opt to rely more on bottled water.
Now, public health officials are interested in encouraging more domestic well owners to have their wells tested — providing data to help understand environmental and potential health impacts, he said.
“We need more people to get their wells tested,” he said. “We need more people to get filters installed.”