CREEDE, Colo.—A final Superfund listing for an abandoned mining site north of town is likely in September, Environmental Protection Agency officials said.
They also said Wednesday in a meeting of the Willow Creek Reclamation Committee that cleanup of one of the main pollution sources could take up to three years.
EPA officials said in March that they were seeking the listing for five acres including the Nelson Tunnel, part of which has been identified as the largest source of cadmium, lead and zinc in the Willow Creek watershed. The pollutants have been blamed for eliminating fish in a two-mile stretch below the site.
The Superfund listing would include the nearby Commodore waste rock pile along the creek. In 2005, drainage constructed around the pile failed during a flood. Another flood could put the town at risk of contamination. The EPA plans to begin stabilizing the pile this summer under its emergency response program.
Hays Griswold, who will head up work on the Commodore pile for the EPA, said the agency was busy gathering unspent money from other projects for the work.
Briana Gunn, a water resources engineer with the firm designing the Commodore project, said the channel would be redesigned to accommodate a flow of 532 cubic feet per second. That is roughly five times greater than the floodwaters that washed part of the pile away in 2005, reclamation committee members said.
The committee has been cleaning up the mining district for years, but the absence of legislation to protect nonprofit groups from legal liability while cleaning up pollution sources kept it from working on the tunnel.
Mike Wireman, the EPA’s lead contact with the community over the last eight years, said the main question in the cleanup is whether the EPA can limit the amount of water coming through the tunnel and thereby avoid having to build a treatment plant.
“That’s the million-dollar question,” Wireman said.
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Information from: The Pueblo Chieftain,
