Minturn – In many ways, Bobby Ginn’s proposal to build 1,700 upscale homes and condominiums just around the corner from Vail ski area looks like so many other mega-developments in the Eagle Valley.
But the key difference is that the Florida developer hopes to attract the super-wealthy to land so contaminated with mining waste that it landed on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund list of the nation’s most- polluted properties.
Ginn’s ambitious $3.4 billion Battle Mountain project calls for a private ski area, golf course and five housing subdivisions, ranging from multimillion- dollar slopeside homes to employee condominiums slated for the abandoned mining town of Gilman.
Set on 5,300 acres that include the contaminated Eagle Mine, waste-rock piles that leach poisonous runoff into the Eagle River and other sources of heavy metals from arsenic to zinc, the project is being touted as the best way to clean up the environmental catastrophe.
“The development is the remedy for this site,” Ken Waesche, an environmental consultant for the Ginn Co., told members of the town’s planning and zoning commission Wednesday night.
In addition to the development paying for mine-drainage costs and removal of toxic hot spots – estimated at more than $40 million – proponents say the golf-course greens and building foundations themselves can effectively “cap” contaminated soils.
For many people in Minturn, the proposal presents a conundrum: In exchange for getting the site cleaned and realizing millions of dollars in additional revenues that will pull the cash- strapped town into the black, they can anticipate a fourfold jump in population.
Additionally, the project would attract extraordinarily wealthy second-homers, a prospect that rankles folks in a community where residents distinguish their low-key “authentic” community from nearby Vail.
And questions persist over whether a former Superfund site can be turned into hot property.
Melissa Kenney, a doctoral candidate at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, developed a cost-benefit analysis for redeveloping Superfund sites and found that they often remain undesirable even once they’re cleaned.
“There’s a huge stigma that’s associated with them,” Kenney said. “And that becomes a strong barrier to those sites becoming redeveloped.”
But just 10 highway miles from the Vail Village, the Battle Mountain property has often been viewed as a potential hot development, and proponents say that the Superfund designation should not be a deterrent.
“It’s 5,312 acres, and about 150 of it is a Superfund site,” said Ginn Co. spokesman Cliff Thompson
Ginn, who previously developed a lucrative resort on Florida’s pesticide- laced Lake Apopka, is part of a pioneering wave of developers who buy contaminated lands at bargain prices and take on the cleanup in hopes of turning huge profits.
The EPA touts such “re-use” efforts as effective blends of environmental concerns and economics, noting that Home Depot has turned several contaminated sites into stores, including one in Denver.
“Generally speaking, it’s better to have somebody that’s actively managing the land than just put an engineered solution on it and leaving,” said Rebecca Thomas, a Superfund project manager with the EPA’s Denver office.
For the Battle Mountain development, Waesche said construction crews would minimize scraping and require trucks to pass through rinse stations to reduce metal-laden dust.
“Whenever you do earthmoving activities, it’s a concern, a legitimate concern,” he said. “And it’s even more a concern when you’re dealing with contaminated sites.”
Staff writer Steve Lipsher can be reached at 970-513-9495 or slipsher@denverpost.com.
