U.S. Water News Online
LA JARA, Colo. -- Officials at the Summitville site, a former gold mine near the New Mexico line once described as Colorado's worst environmental disaster, say the state's lingering drought has helped the cleanup process.
This winter's relatively low snowpack -- about 70 percent of average -- means that virtually all water runoff from the site can be treated to remove contaminants, said Austin Buckingham, site manager for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
It also allowed crews to start this year's treatment efforts earlier than last year, when some runoff from a snowpack 165 percent of average couldn't be treated, he said.
It costs about $1.4 million per year to treat the contaminated water, and about $195 million has been spent so far cleaning up the Superfund site.
The 1,440-acre Summitville site about 25 miles southwest of Del Norte sits at about 11,500 feet above sea level and had been mined by various methods since 1870. Most recently, miners heaped crushed ore into piles that were drenched with a cyanide mixture to leach gold from the rock.
In 1992, a containment basin failed, sending water contaminated with heavy metals into nearby creeks that feed the Alamosa River. The pollution killed all life in 17 miles of the river system.
Summitville Consolidated Mining Co. Inc., a subsidiary of Galactic Resources Ltd. of Canada, declared bankruptcy that year.
The site's water-treatment plant has received about $400,000 in upgrades to make it safer and more efficient, but a new plant capable of handling all the runoff from high-snowpack years probably won't be possible, said Victor Ketellapper, site manager for the Environmental Protection Agency.
"A water-treatment plant ranks very low in the priority of funding because the area is of ecological risk, not a risk to human health," Ketellapper said.
He said annual cleanup costs could be cut by up to 50 percent under a proposal to use organic compounds including potato waste to treat soil at the site, but money for the project is not in the budget.
Arcadis G & M Inc., an international company that is working to prove its patented method, has been using it only for a year at other sites and more time is needed to determine its effectiveness, Ketellapper said.
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