{"id":61427,"date":"2014-03-03T23:53:24","date_gmt":"2014-03-04T06:53:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/silverton-struggles-to-clear-air\/"},"modified":"2014-03-04T06:53:24","modified_gmt":"2014-03-04T06:53:24","slug":"silverton-struggles-to-clear-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/silverton-struggles-to-clear-air\/","title":{"rendered":"Silverton struggles to clear air"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Water
Water flowing down the mountainside out of the Red and Bonita Mine contains high levels of manganese, zinc, copper, lead, cadmium, aluminum and iron that will make its way into Cement Creek. The pollution inhibits aquatic life and vegetation. Since about 2004 metal concentrations in Cement Creek, which flows into the Animas River, have \u201ceasily doubled,\u201d says Peter Butler of the Animas River Stakeholders Group.<\/span>JERRY McBRIDE\/Durango Herald file photo<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

SILVERTON \u2013 Silverton\u2019s abandoned mines have oozed toxic metals into the local water system for decades.<\/p>\n

While the Environmental Protection Agency has frequently sought a Superfund listing, some people of Silverton have long resisted federal intervention on the grounds it would hurt tourism and besmirch the prospect of mining\u2019s return \u2013 even as mining pollution killed off three of four trout species in the Upper Animas River.<\/p>\n

But the tides may be changing in Silverton, \u201cthe mining town that never quit.\u201d At a recent meeting of the Animas River Stakeholders Group, San Juan County Commissioners Peter McKay and Ernie Kuhlman told the government scientists, mining representatives and reporters who had gathered in Silverton\u2019s Town Hall that the public\u2019s exasperation with the environmental damage is mounting, and at this point, Superfund has to be one of the options being investigated.<\/p>\n

McKay said the 20-year-old issue of what to do about Silverton\u2019s mines had reached a \u201ctipping point.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople don\u2019t understand why there isn\u2019t a solution,\u201d he said. \u201cAs county commissioners, we don\u2019t know how to answer people in our own county, and more and more communities downstream, including the La Plata County commissioners.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the solution isn\u2019t the EPA, we have to hear what it is,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Years and years<\/p>\n

For years, no solution has been equal to the problem \u2013 despite the efforts of the stakeholders group, which, in the absence of a Superfund designation, has tried to work with the EPA and Sunnyside Gold Corp. to improve water quality in the Animas.<\/p>\n

In fact, water quality has gotten much worse in the Animas River.<\/p>\n

Between 2005 and 2010, three out of four of the fish species that lived in the Upper Animas River beneath Silverton died. According to studies by the U.S. Geological Survey, both the volume of insects and the number of bug species have plummeted. And starting in 2006, USGS scientists now find the water that flows under Bakers Bridge \u2013 and thereafter, into Durango \u2013 carries concentrations of zinc that are toxic to animal life.<\/p>\n

The technology to clean the dirty water exists: a limestone water treatment plant. But the stakeholders group has no money to pay for it, and the EPA estimates it would cost between $12 million and $17 million to build and $1 million a year to run \u2013 in perpetuity.<\/p>\n

Sunnyside Gold Corp., the last mining company to operate in Silverton, was bought in 2003 by Kinross Gold Corp., an international mining conglomerate that generated billions in revenue in 2013. Sunnyside denies all liability for cleaning up the worsened metal pollution. It has offered $6.5 million \u2013 not enough for a limestone water treatment plant \u2013 in return for being released from all liability.<\/p>\n

Superfund?<\/p>\n

At the stakeholders group meeting, commissioner Kuhlman insisted that after years of deliberation, the stakeholders group, if not the greater community, should take definitive action.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we ought to come to conclusion one of these days,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Some Silverton residents voiced continued opposition to a Superfund listing. Steve Fearn said it would nearly destroy Silverton\u2019s allure to mining companies.<\/p>\n

Kuhlman said there had been no mining in Silverton for 25 years.<\/p>\n

Mark Esper, editor of the Silverton Standard, interrupted the stakeholders\u2019 conversation about data collection to ask when, if ever, the stakeholders would come up with a recommendation about what to do to finally clean up the water. Answers varied, but each was posed in terms of years, not months.<\/p>\n

McKay said that kind of time frame was increasingly unacceptable.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are getting ever more uneasy. You guys are doing a wonderful job, but take another breath, and that\u2019s a year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Peter Butler, co-coordinator of the Animas River Stakeholders Group and chairman of the Colorado Water Quality Control Commission, said the group would never render a verdict on the Superfund listing because its membership includes both the EPA and Sunnyside Gold.<\/p>\n

At stake<\/p>\n

For a while, it appeared that the stakeholders\u2019 collaborative effort to clean up Cement Creek was working: After Sunnyside Gold Corp. stoppered American Tunnel with the first of three massive concrete bulkheads in 1996, declining water flow from the site meant less metal pollution in Cement Creek.<\/p>\n

But Butler told The Durango Herald that in 2004, the bulkheads stopped functioning like a cork in a wine bottle. Instead, they started working like a plug in a bathtub: water, prevented from exiting the mountain through American Tunnel, rose up within the mountain until it reached other drainage points, namely, the Red and Bonita, Gold King and Mogul mines.<\/p>\n

Since then, Butler said, data shows that most metal concentrations in Cement Creek have \u201ceasily doubled\u201d their pre-bulkhead amounts. He said as a result, the recent environmental damage done to the Animas has far outpaced gains made in other stakeholders group cleanup efforts, like the remediation of Mineral Creek, another Animas River tributary.<\/p>\n

Red and Bonita<\/p>\n

At the meeting, EPA\u2019s Steve Way proposed placing a bulkhead in Red and Bonita Mine, saying it might reduce the amount of water that ultimately needs to be treated by a limestone water treatment plant, making the plant cheaper to build.<\/p>\n

But in a phone interview after the stakeholders meeting, he said a Red and Bonita bulkhead would dovetail, not obviate, the EPA\u2019s pursuit of a Superfund designations in Silverton.<\/p>\n

Silverton resident Roy Ferguson spoke out against the Red and Bonita bulkhead, saying \u201cif you plug that up, it precludes mining\u201d in the future.<\/p>\n

He said it was too soon to discount the idea that mining might return to Silverton.<\/p>\n

\u201cTellurium was pretty useless until they invented computer chips,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Kirsten Brown, with the Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety, said modern mining techniques mean a \u201creal mining company\u201d could work around the bulkhead at Red and Bonita.<\/p>\n

Way said the Red and Bonita bulkhead will cost between $750,000 and $1.5 million, and the EPA would likely pay for it.<\/p>\n

In an interview, Way said pollution was a moral issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not for me to get on my soapbox and tell Silverton what to do. It\u2019s fundamentally not OK to degrade a body of water of that significance for the long term,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

At the stakeholders meeting, Ferguson later seemed to change his mind about the Red and Bonita bulkhead.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter all, there\u2019s an outside chance it might work,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

cmcallister@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

pollution at \u2018tipping point,\u2019 some say<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":61428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[738,13,167,327],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-61427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-environmental-issue","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-local-news-lead","tag-silverton"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61427","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=61427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61427"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=61427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}