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January 21, 2016 02:49 PM UTC

And Finally, The Superfund Comes To Silverton

  • 14 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols
Gov. John Hickenlooper drinks from the Animas River.
Gov. John Hickenlooper drinks from the Animas River after the August minewater spill.

As the Denver Post’s Jesse Paul reports this afternoon, bringing a decades-long controversy in Colorado’s high country full circle:

Attorneys for Silverton and San Juan County are in the process of drafting a letter to Colorado’s governor in support of Superfund cleanup for its leaching, abandoned mines.

While the request still must be approved by the town’s elected officials next week, the action represents the most significant move since the Gold King Mine spill in August prompted cries for a large-scale federal intervention.

“It’s a giant step,” said Bill Gardner, Silverton’s town administrator.

For two decades, Silverton rebuffed federal Superfund dollars, fearing negative economic impacts, bureaucratic red tape and stigma. But now the town is signaling that it’s working to obtain a national hazard priority listing as soon as possible.

As the Durango Herald’s Mary Shinn reports, the much bigger population centers down the Animas River from Silverton need no convincing:

The Durango City Council unanimously approved a resolution Tuesday supporting a Superfund designation for mines above Silverton.

“I think everyone in Durango and Animas River watershed has been concerned,”said Councilor Dick White, referring to ongoing water quality issues…

States are responsible for funding 10 percent of the construction of a Superfund remediation project, EPA officials told the county in September.

If ongoing water treatment is necessary, Colorado could be responsible for covering those costs, unless a responsible party, such as a company, is found.

The shift from steadfast opposition to acceptance of the large-scale resources that the Environmental Protection Agency can bring to bear with a Superfund designation by the local governments in Silverton and San Juan County completely changes the long-term outlook for cleaning up the Animas River watershed, into which mines have been discharging wastewater contaminated with heavy metals for many years before and after the end of mining operations in the area. Previously, a combination of resistance to the “stigma” of a Superfund designation combined with a latent desire by small-time and corporate mining interests to resume production resulted in decades of stonewalling against effective remediation–stonewalling while the mines above them steadily filled with polluted water.

The EPA’s remediation crew that punched through the entrance to the Gold King Mine in August, unleashing a torrent of millions of gallons of polluted water into the Animas River, was not trying to force the issue of cleaning up these mines, and it has been determined pretty conclusively that mistakes were made by this crew that directly caused the spill. But without the kind of comprehensive cleanup operation that only the full resources of the federal government can undertake, that spill was bound to happen sooner or later. In the aftermath, even as Republican politicians jumped at the chance to gratuitously bash the EPA for this spill, everybody on the ground knew that the bigger problem wasn’t with the EPA.

Today, the long list of EPA detractors, from the area’s Congressman Scott Tipton to Durango grandstanding Ben Carson (and let’s not forget the Utah lawmakers who hatched a full-blown conspiracy theory) are not available for comment.

Comments

14 thoughts on “And Finally, The Superfund Comes To Silverton

  1. Hmmm…..the EPA causes a huge disaster that coincidentally forces everyone to give them what they want??

    If you don't at least understand the suspicion you're a fool. It doesn't pass the smell test. I don't know if it was deliberate, but you should not be so smug…..

    1. by the way, Moldy..Everyone knows (or should) this is not true…

      EPA causes a huge disaster 

      the EPA could not prevent a disaster caused by a corporation…or several.

      That's what they were trying to do when a contractor made a mistake…

      Your feeble attempt at blaming the EPA was discredited when Ben Carson, Scott Tipton, Cory Gardner, ad nauseum….tried to lie their way into some political advantage. I guess you do it because you are a useful idiot that has ascended to the skill level of "parrot".

       

       

       

  2. The Superfund cleanup has been good for Pueblo. There is fear that property values will fall with superfund status, but 

    Studies indicate that it is the discovery of environmental contamination that can negatively impact property values. Because the listing of a site on the NPL triggers a federal commitment to do cleanup work, this step reduces uncertainty and may act as a signal to real estate markets that property improvements are imminent.

      Thousands of tons of lead and arsenic contaminated soil has been, or will be removed. This is after a century of consequence- and regulation-free smelter dumping in residential neighborhoods.  It's not the whistle-blowers or the cleanup crew that is the problem – it is the polluters and those who try to delude the public about the dangers.

    Props go to the doctors, the researchers, journalists, and community activists who agitated for years to get the smelter sludge finally cleaned up.

  3. Mamajama, hate to disagree with you, given that I'm usually 99% in agreement with you, and appreciate you typically reporting on all things Pueblo.  But have to say you're DEAD wrong that the Superfunds site in the Eilers neighborhood has been a good thing for either the area or the city.  First off, we're two years in from when the local government gave their "conditional approval" to the designation (which is not required for the Governor to give his approval to the EPA, just as the Governor's approval to the EPA is not required for a site to be designated).  There's been a modicum of testing for lead and arsenic in the area, and That. Is. All.  The EPA reps from Denver who are heading the project, as you might expect, consider the area to be extremely low priority and as a consequence there is no way in the world that the 5-year "condition" is going to be honored.

    Second, there is still a huge number of issues with the EPA testing that beg the question whether the area was or ever actually has been contaminated in the first place.  It's entirely possible that it never should have been listed as a CERCLA site.

    Third, (again, two years in), the EPA has yet to actually draw a boundary for where the site begins and ends.  In theory, half of the south side of town could fall into the Superfund area and people far away from the Eilers neighborhood could see their property affected.

    Fourth, the issue of property values isn't the question exactly.  The real issue is that federal regs from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac hold that properties located in Superfund sites cannot be guaranteed on the secondary market.  The point being is that it is extremely difficult and de facto impossible to take out a home loan for the purchase of properties in Superfund areas.  The people of the Eilers neighborhood, already in a rough patch for a number of decades, now are in a spot where their properties aren't "valueless", but nevertheless cannot be sold. 

    Again, sorry Mamajama, but had to vent on that one, and though I agree with Pols on most things, there is a LOT more to Superfund designation than meets the eye, and the Eilers neighborhood in Pueblo getting the short end of the stick once again.

    1. Only two years? Take a look at the Superfund site in the Canon City area, polluted as a result of years of operation of the Cotter uranium mill just south of town. The Lincoln Park neighborhood and the mill site were added to the Superfund National Priorities List in 1984, and there still is no resolution about permanent clean-up of the site. Although state and federal agencies share in the blame, the primary culprit is the still-functioning Cotter Corporation, which has dragged its feet and litigated issues for decades.

  4. Also, I forgot to add that the slag that is located on the site has nothing to do with the former Eilers smelter.  The slag in the neighborhood came from the steel mill, the iron ore for which has nil arsenic or lead in it.  The slag from the smelter itself was used as railroad grade and is located all over southeastern Colorado (meaning that if there is an issue with it, it's a gargantuan problem).  The smelter company has been bankrupt and defunct for nearly a century, so the question isn't about punishing former polluters, as they've ceased to exist. 

    As far as protecting the health of the neighborhood, of course we can all agree on that.  But again it goes back to whether there actually is any lead or arsenic contamination.  The one study that was conducted appropriately by the City-County health department (which was not relied upon by the EPA), found zero arsenic in any of the soil, and only one child with elevated lead in their system.  The child, by the way, lived no where near the neighborhood, and very possibly got their elevated level from paint chips or toys from China.

    1. Rockhound, you still live in Pueblo (I'm assuming), and I don't. You are entitled to feel what you feel, and think what you think, and vent what you vent,which is that the EPA Superfund designation has not been good for Pueblo, that the EPA is dragging its feet and further harming Eilers and other Pueblo residents.

      I understand – when a century of dumping lead and arsenic-contaminated slag near wetlands and river intakes, mounding it into hills for kids to ride dirt bikes down, using it as foundation land fill in residential neighborhoods, and building railroad tracks on it comes to light, it's embarrassing and expensive to sort out. The photo below, taken in 2013, is of a heavy metal sludge discharging direcly into the Arkansas river, twenty years after it was first reported to the Health Department.

      sludge coming from a culvert near old smelter site in Pueblo.

      Property values may never recover. Pueblo has been in an economic downturn since most of the mills closed and the steel work was outsourced to China; fortunately for the town, it doesn't really sit on much gas or oil, but has plenty of wind and solar resources if the REAs can bring themselves to stop suppressing renewables.

      None of that was the EPA's fault or doings – not the dumping, not the cover-up of the dumping. Their job is to find out how big the problem is, and to remediate it. I'm surprised remediation hasn't started – I thought it had.

      The EPA was brought in to uncover the truth – the "Guilty Knowledge" detailed in Ramirez' excellent PULP article. People in the community worked hard for years against official pressure to find out the truth.

      So the EPA isn't moving as fast as they promised. Perhaps Pueblo isn't a priority, as you said. But at least people will eventually know how much lead and arsenic is in the soil, in people's blood levels, in the water. It took more than a century to create the problem. It will take more than a few years to fix it.

      But it's never a good idea to keep toxic sludge, childhood traumas, socially unacceptable emotions secret. They will always come out eventually, and nobody will be happy with the results. It's still better to know than not to know.

       

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