In the classic 1948 Humphrey Bogart movie “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” it is said of old gold mines, “We’ve wounded this mountain. It’s our duty to close her wounds. It’s the least we can do to show our gratitude for all the wealth she’s given us.”
While the old prospector who offers this memorable quote is speaking of an orange-tinted mountainside in Mexico, it is a moment in the film that hits close to home. As I have learned quickly in my tenure as the Environmental Protection Agency’s administrator for the Rocky Mountain and Great Plains states, abandoned hardrock mines are among the most serious and intractable of Western environmental issues.
Mine-scarred lands – waste rock piles, polluted and hazardous mine structures and tunnels, and streams contaminated with acid runoff and heavy metals – affect literally thousands of mountain drainages throughout the Rockies. Many are technically challenging and resource-intensive problems, and tools and solutions are in high demand.
In the effort to prioritize cleanups and revitalize land and water resources, the EPA, state agencies and local governments need all the help they can get.
It is difficult to overstate the impact that mine-scarred lands have on mountain environments. In fact, most high-country counties in the Mountain West have some combination of public, private and nonprofit parties with an interest in addressing mine-related problems.
Many want clean streams that support fish; others want open space and safe public access; and others want to protect valuable water supplies for growing towns.
While there are many parties willing to invest in cleanups, most have been prevented from doing so by the threat of liability outlined in environmental laws. Designed to prevent polluters from getting off the hook, these provisions don’t differentiate between the innocent and the guilty in making abandoned mine cleanups an “all or nothing” proposition. They essentially say if you touch contaminated property, you assume the full financial and legal obligation to clean it completely.
This means that parties willing to pay for beneficial projects that would incrementally improve environmental conditions – things like removing and capping waste piles, diverting acid runoff and sealing hazardous mine entrances – must commit to meeting stringent soil and clean water standards. Many of these mine sites involve substantial long-term restoration costs, meaning that simply removing a waste pile could expose a volunteer to hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in potential liability. Needless to say, that message has sidelined many good projects and has had a chilling effect on the revitalization of land and water resources.
This week, EPA Administrator Steve Johnson announced the introduction of legislation, on behalf of the Bush administration, that will change all that. The long-awaited Good Samaritan Clean Watershed Act will provide third-party volunteers – including local governments, watershed groups and businesses – with the liability relief they need to tackle some of the most problematic mine-related problems in their communities. The act will open doors to hundreds of cleanup projects and increase the pace of addressing the more than half a million hardrock mines across Western states. In Colorado, it will open doors to dozens of projects, from remote watersheds in the San Juan mountains to well-known and visited drainages in Summit County, the Clear Creek watershed, and the Front Range foothills.
My friend and irrepressible force for collaboration on abandoned mine issues, Patty Limerick of the Center of the American West, has called the Good Samaritan concept “one of humanity’s best ideas.” This legislation leverages that idea on the abandoned mine problem. It enables innocent parties to help rehabilitate mine-scarred lands without removing accountability for those who have caused or profited from pollution. The act maintains strong environmental safeguards and calls for a streamlined permit program that ensures that cleanup activities are technically sound and beneficial.
The time for Good Samaritan is now. Clearing the legal roadblocks that prevent mine site cleanups is an idea that enjoys bipartisan support in Congress and is backed by public officials and environmental leaders across the West. The EPA and our many partners hope for the speedy passage of this much-needed bill.
Robert E. Roberts is the regional administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
