One Year After A Toxic River Spill, No Clear Plan To Clean Up Western Mines
KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:
One year ago, a spill at the Gold King Mine in southwest Colorado unleashed 3 million gallons of water tainted with mercury and arsenic into the surrounding environment. You might remember. It turned the Animas River bright orange. A designation of Superfund status might be the only way to clean up the disaster.
And as Colorado Public Radio's Grace Hood reports, the spill also brought to light a major problem with abandoned mines across the west.
GRACE HOOD, BYLINE: One year later, this is the biggest sign of change at the Gold King Mine.
(SOUNDBITE OF WATER FLOWING)
HOOD: Water from a treatment plant enters a stream near the base of the mine. Joyel Dhieux with the Environmental Protection Agency says water laced with heavy metals continues to gush out of the mine. That's why the EPA built this plant last fall.
JOYEL DHIEUX: Five hundred gallons a minute is what we're currently seeing coming from the Gold King Mine. It's a bit of an increase, as you might expect with all the spring melt in the area.
HOOD: Five hundred gallons a minute is a lot. But Dhieux says this is only one of several abandoned mines in the area. Some have been discharging the same kind of toxic water for decades. And the water from those mines is not running through a treatment plant. In fact, this complex problem is at the heart of why the EPA was at the Gold King Mine last summer.
And it's what prompted the local government here to apply for a Superfund listing this spring.
WILLY TOOKEY: There was a lot of sleepless nights.
HOOD: Willy Tookey is an administrator for San Juan County. For more than a decade, the government here shied away from Superfund status. The two biggest concerns, it would cause a drop in property values and a drop in tourism. But Tookey says intense negotiations with the EPA over this past year lead to new confidence and assurances.
TOOKEY: Because of the circumstances, I think we were able to get these answers that we weren't able to before.
HOOD: Answers for EPA critics and Republican lawmakers have been more elusive. The agency accepted full responsibility for the August 2015 spill. And samples show water quality in Colorado and New Mexico has returned to pre-spill conditions. But critics point out that no one within the EPA has been punished, however a criminal investigation is underway.
The state of New Mexico has enough unresolved questions it filed suit against both the EPA and Colorado. Meantime, the country hasn't made much progress on fixing abandoned mines across the west.
DOUG YOUNG: There are still tens of thousands of those throughout the country that still need attention.
HOOD: Doug Young is a senior analyst at Denver-based Keystone Center, which focuses on science and public policy. He says two key obstacles are funding and legal accountability.
YOUNG: My original hope was that after the Gold King spill, it might cause people to rethink how we might be able to come up with a solution.
HOOD: Historically, Young says Congress has considered two fixes, Good Samaritan legislation to encourage volunteer clean-ups and a reclamation fee for hard rock mining companies. But several Good Samaritan bills in Congress seem to be going nowhere. And the proposed fee is even more of a non-starter.
YOUNG: What we've seen, I think, is a going back to the - and resurrecting some of these old concepts that haven't received wide support. And as a result, I think we're seeing it get bogged down again in those same debates.
HOOD: Young says because of the stalemate, The Keystone Center is trying a new approach using the Superfund program but not calling the clean-ups Superfund sites, which can bring political and economic baggage. In spite of the gridlock, he says an answer will emerge. The leaking tainted water from these mines will become more valuable with drought and climate change.
And when that reaches a crisis point, lawmakers will really have something to talk about. For NPR News, I'm Grace Hood in Silverton, Colo.
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