DENVER—The Environmental Protection Agency said it could be a month or two before drilling begins on a well to pump water from a crumbling tunnel where local officials fear more than a billion gallons of trapped water could cause a potentially catastrophic flood.
EPA officials are scrambling to find a contractor and more than $4.5 million to pay for the plan east of Leadville, said Stan Christensen, remedial project manager who is heading up the EPA’s effort.
Lake County officials declared a state of emergency for fear that melt from record snowfall could add to growing pressure in the tunnel and cause a blowout and flood the town.
The partially collapsed Leadville Mine Drainage Tunnel drains contaminated water from abandoned mines that date back to the 1800s. The Bureau of Reclamation, the EPA, state agencies and Lake County officials had been working on a plan to drain the tunnel since at least 2003.
But the plan to drill into the tunnel and pump water more than a mile to a water treatment plant became bogged down in a bureaucratic quagmire over ownership.
The bureau wanted to give the state the tunnel, a $20 million water plant that removes heavy metals and other contaminates from the old mines, and $30 million—enough for 40 years of operating expenses, said reclamation spokesman Peter Soeth.
The state balked.
“Frankly I don’t blame them,” Christensen said. “It’s taking on a considerable liability for the state.”
Calls to Jeffrey Deckler, remedial programs manager at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, were not immediately returned.
Christensen said they plan this week to begin pumping ground water out of an abandoned mine shaft on the other side of the hill drained by the tunnel in an effort to ease the water pressure.
A speaker system that would broadcast evacuation notices has been installed near a mobile home park that has 300 residents near the tunnel’s portal will be tested Friday afternoon, just before officials plan to meet with residents.
Built over nine years ending in 1952, the tunnel was meant to drain the historic mining district in the hills east of Leadville where years ago miners searched for gold, silver, and other minerals.
The Bureau of Reclamation took ownership of the tunnel in 1959 and began treating the contaminated water draining from the tunnel in 1992.
A plan to drill a 17-inch cylinder into the tunnel was originally approved in 2005.
Leadville is about 85 miles southwest of Denver.
