Federal officials agreed Friday to begin drawing water away from a blocked mine-drainage tunnel in Leadville to avert a possible blowout, but they disputed the threat to the historic town.
Meanwhile, officials in Lake County demanded tests of the tunnel’s warning sirens and contemplated evacuation plans, and Gov. Bill Ritter implored President Bush to order urgent steps to reduce the building water pressure.
“The issue is now approaching a crisis stage,” Ritter wrote in a letter to the White House, calling on the bureau to drill extraction wells behind the blockage and construct a bulkhead to prevent blowouts.
An estimated 1.5 billion gallons of acidic mine drainage, laced with toxic levels of cadmium and zinc, is believed stopped up behind a collapse in the Bureau of Reclamation’s Leadville Mine Drainage Tunnel, threatening to blow out the walls.
“Such a release,” Ritter wrote, “could result in the loss of life, cause untold human misery, threaten the drinking-water supplies for a half-million people, impact farmers and ranchers and leave the river and the recreation economy it also supports degraded for decades.”
Already, officials say that untreated mine runoff is seeping out of new springs and flowing into the Arkansas River, the site of a massive 25-year Superfund cleanup effort.
Gary Campbell, deputy regional director for the Bureau of Reclamation, indicated today that the tunnel’s treatment plant could handle an additional 900 gallons of water a minute drawn from behind the blockage if it can be routed there and if the contaminants are the same as those in water already being treated.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency agreed to start pumping water from a nearby mine shaft directly into the Arkansas River drainage within the next two weeks, assuming that it is clean enough to meet environmental standards.
Members of Colorado’s congressional delegation quickly offered their help.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar was set to visit the tunnel with local officials Saturday and has vowed to pressure the Bureau of Reclamation for a solution.
His Republican counterpart, Wayne Allard, has a meeting on the matter planned in Denver on Thursday.
“The time for foot-dragging and further government studies has passed,” Allard said. “The time has come to stop studying and stop bureaucratic squabbles and focus on immediate and long-term solutions. It is my hope that by getting everyone in the same room, we will be able to map out a clear strategy to protect the Arkansas River and the people of Colorado.”
U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, a Denver Democrat, has asked the chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce to schedule hearings on why the pooling of contaminated water has not been addressed until now.
Although concerned about the blockage for years, Lake County commissioners declared a state of emergency earlier this week for fear that the heavy winter snowpack would exacerbate the problem during the spring runoff.
Water beneath the steep slopes of the mining district has risen to 188 feet above the tunnel’s water-treatment plant.
“The problem is that we do not know what the real risk is of a blowout or a mountainside failure (but) the assumption that we are going to move forward on is that the potential is increasing,” said Hans Kallam, director of the state Division of Emergency Management, during a conference call of local, state and federal officials today.
Campbell downplayed the potential for a blowout.
“Right now, we don’t believe there’s an imminent threat,” he said.
But Brad Littlepage, who runs the water-treatment plant but pointedly spoke as a private citizen, cited a bureau study from 1988 that indicated the threat of a blowout was “significant” with only 77 feet of water built up.
“The only thing that’s different today is instead of 77 feet of water, we have 200 feet of water,” he said.
Officials with the EPA also termed a blowout “likely,” along with the possibility of the release of heavy metals for miles downstream.
Steve Lipsher: 970-513-9495 or slipsher@denverpost.com
