JUDITH KOHLER Associated Press writer | Posted: Friday, January 13, 2006 12:00 am
DENVER - Momentum is building in Congress and across the West to make it easier to clean up the old, abandoned mines dotting mountains and polluting streams, with lawmakers looking for ways to protect Good Samaritans who want to step in and help.
A major obstacle is a federal law that results in, "If you treat it, you own it," said Patricia Limerick, director of the University of Colorado's Center of the American West, which issued a report Wednesday on the problem and some solutions.
Colorado's congressional delegation is sponsoring bills that would protect conservation groups, companies or states from legal trouble if they clean up a site endangering drinking water supply or a gold-medal trout stream.
Representatives from federal agencies, the mining industry and Coloradans dealing with zinc, arsenic, lead and other metals flowing from gold and silver mines, some dating to the 1800s, said changes in the law are crucial.
There are thousands of the mines, whose operators are long gone, throughout the West and about 500,000 nationwide, according to federal statistics. Estimates vary on the magnitude of the fallout, with the U.S. Bureau of Mines putting the figures at 12,000 miles of Western waterways - 40 percent - and 180,000 acres of lakes and reservoirs contaminated by mine drainage.
What stops local governments or activists from taking on the projects is the Clean Water Act, the groundbreaking legislation that set water-quality standards.
The 1971 law holds anyone who tries to right old wrongs liable for the pollution from then on. They must also meet stringent water-quality standards, even if a less comprehensive cleanup would do as much good.
"The fear of liability under the Water Act or the Superfund is a major impediment to Good Samaritans going out and doing this work," said Brent Fewell, deputy assistant administrator for water in the Environmental Protection Agency.
The conservation group Trout Unlimited is working with the EPA and landowners in Utah to clean up pollution from a series of old mines in the American Fork Canyon. The agency first had to negotiate a deal and issue an administrative order protecting Trout Unlimited from lawsuits.
To use waivers and administrative maneuvers in all cases would be "madness," said Robbie Roberts, head of the regional EPA office in Denver.
"This was very, very hard," Roberts said. "Doing them all that way, you're talking a very limited response."
The regional office of the U.S. Forest Service has been cleaning up about 200 abandoned mines a year, mostly in Colorado and South Dakota, but wants to do more, regional forester Rick Cables said.
"We've been doing our best and hopefully, with the combination of getting some legislation that removes the disincentive for cleaning up these properties and then maybe getting some additional dollars appropriated through partners like Trout Unlimited and Western Governors' (Association) and others, we'll get some more resources," Cables said.
Colorado Sens. Wayne Allard, a Republican, and Ken Salazar, a Democrat, have introduced legislation that would remove liability for Good Samaritans. Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., has sponsored similar bills the last two sessions and has new measures, including one to provide funding.
Other members of Colorado's delegation, including Republican Reps. Bob Beauprez and Joel Hefley and Democratic Reps. John Salazar and Diana DeGette, support the changes.
Congressional staffers expressed hope that the legislation will be considered this year. Doug Young, a policy director for Udall, said the problem of abandoned mines hasn't been as high-profile as other environmental issues in part because they're often out of sight.
He said he expects that to change.
"The more you see growth and development in the West, residential development or recreational, outdoor development in terms of use, we're going to see more and more people saying, `Hey, I just went by this area and there's orange muck that's spilling into my favorite fishing hole,"' Young said.
He and other staffers stressed that the legislation wouldn't apply to Superfund sites, some of the nation's worst toxic sites. Cleanup plans would have to approved by state and local agencies. The shield from lawsuits wouldn't apply if the site is left in worse shape.
Roberts of the EPA said more education, including the report by the Center of the American West, titled "Cleaning Up Abandoned Hardrock Mines in the West," will also make a difference.