{"id":108104,"date":"2015-11-23T22:12:03","date_gmt":"2015-11-24T05:12:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/silverton-san-juan-county-officials-will-pursue-superfund\/"},"modified":"2015-11-23T22:12:03","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T05:12:03","slug":"silverton-san-juan-county-officials-will-pursue-superfund","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/silverton-san-juan-county-officials-will-pursue-superfund\/","title":{"rendered":"Silverton, San Juan County officials will pursue Superfund"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"At
At a meeting Thursday night, San Juan County commissioners and the Silverton Town trustees said they both plan to pursue Superfund status to treat pollution leaking from the area\u2019s inactive mines.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file photo<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

SILVERTON \u2013 After more than 20 years of debate, the town of Silverton will officially engage the Environmental Protection Agency to work toward listing the mining district in the Upper Animas watershed as a Superfund site.<\/p>\n

Thursday night, San Juan County commissioners and the Silverton Town Board trustees said a motion will be presented at those agencies\u2019 next respective board meetings to direct staff to pursue the EPA\u2019s hazardous cleanup program.<\/p>\n

On the heels of a three-day tour of several Superfund sites in Colorado, Silverton officials were convinced the federal agency\u2019s program was the only avenue to truly improve water quality in the Animas River basin from pollution leaking from inactive mines.<\/p>\n

Initially against a Superfund designation, San Juan County Commissioner Ernie Kuhlman said last week\u2019s field trip to Creede, Leadville, Minturn and Idaho Springs led him to appreciate Superfund status.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not thrilled with Superfund sites, but I\u2019ll tell you what, you\u2019re not going to get anything done if you don\u2019t,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Buried under almost 2 feet of snow in Silverton\u2019s historic Town Hall, about 40 attendees seemed to reach a general consensus: Superfund, with its definite drawbacks, is the only real, viable option.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s really no other program out there with the financial resources to take care of the necessary remediation for this area,\u201d San Juan County Manager Willie Tookie said. \u201cSuperfund is pretty much it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tookie said the county looked at other alternatives to treat the mine waste water, but ultimately, hit a \u201cbrick wall.\u201d He admitted Superfund is a slow process, but because the EPA triggered the Gold King Mine spill, he expects the region to be placed higher atop the priority list.<\/p>\n

The question whether the mining district north of Silverton should be designated a Superfund has loomed over the community for more than 20 years, as inactive mines have increasingly leaked acid mine drainage into the Animas watershed and down to San Juan River in New Mexico, impairing water quality standards.<\/p>\n

But in August when the EPA triggered 3 million gallons of backed-up mine wastewater from the Gold King Mine, effectively turning the Animas and San Juan rivers orange for several days, the issue of cleanup from inactive mines rose to the forefront of public discourse.<\/p>\n

Last week\u2019s tour, which brought together representatives from nearly all the downstream communities, was eye-opening for a lot of officials. Though those communities laid bare all the complications with the designation \u2013 time delays, difference of opinions over treatment options and mistakes \u2013 each one was ultimately happy with the end result: a clean, healthy river.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy takeaway from the visit is that there are probably not many options to take care of this problem without going to a Superfund designation,\u201d La Plata County Commissioner Brad Blake said. \u201cThat\u2019s just what you come away with.<\/p>\n

\u201dThursday night was a pivotal turning point in that conversation, especially since the EPA and state officials said last week the Superfund boundary would not extend to the town limits of Silverton \u2013 a major concern from residents in years past.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to centralize where they put the Superfund tag,\u201d Silverton Town Board Trustee Larry Gallegos said. \u201cIt\u2019s likely going to happen because there are not a whole lot of other options out there. We at least have the fan in our hands. That way, when the stuff hits it, we can point where it goes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Larry Perino, a Sunnyside Mine spokesman and Silverton native, maintained that if Superfund is pursued, the mining company \u2013 a potential responsible party \u2013 will immediately go to litigation. But outside of Perino, there wasn\u2019t much opposition. Silverton officials and residents, previously skeptical of Superfund, voiced support for the designation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that Superfund money is a store of money we have available to us to do what\u2019s necessary up in Cement Creek,\u201d said John Wright, a Silverton resident and geologist.<\/p>\n

Marcie Bidwell, executive director for Mountain Studies Institute, said Thursday night was not only a turning point for the health of the Animas River, but also for the town of Silverton.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you talk to Silverton residents and why they love the mining era so much, it\u2019s because they led the world in innovation at that time,\u201d Bidwell said. \u201cSo if there\u2019s an opportunity for Silverton to lead the world again in reclamation, I think they\u2019d get behind that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

options, town will engage Environmental Protection Agency<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":108105,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[304,174,13,239,1562,327,295,303],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-108104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-animas-river","tag-environmental-cleanup","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-mining","tag-san-juan-county-colorado","tag-silverton","tag-water","tag-water-pollution"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108104"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=108104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}