EDITORIAL & OPINION — EPA’s bungled Summitville cleanup — Glass houses

If veracity is the heart of morality, as the ancient Greeks believed, then the United States government would be well-advised to settle a longstanding legal battle with mining promoter Robert Friedland over the ill-fated Summitville gold mine in Colorado.

For years now, the U.S. government, the media and environmentalists have held up Summitville as one of the worst environmental disasters in modern mining history. And for years, these parties have sought to lay blame for the “disaster” at the feet of Galactic’s founder in particular, and the mining industry in general.

In the past few weeks alone, media reports have repeated the accusation that cyanide and heavy metals from Summitville “polluted” or “killed” miles and miles of the Alamosa River, or caused “widespread pollution to a series of nearby rivers.” As that fairy tale goes, the environmental apocalypse was stanched by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) when it took over the project from a bankrupt Galactic in late 1992.

However, in this case, the facts stand in the way of a good story. When the EPA took over Summitville, cyanide was not leaving the site, and neither were metals. The EPA tried to convince the public otherwise (in a video it was preparing), only to be told by Colorado’s department of natural resources that, “believe it or not, the entire site was in compliance with water standards at the time of the bankruptcy.”

While cyanide was indeed escaping from a poorly constructed leach pad, it was not leaving the site. It was collected at the drain, and either pumped back to the heap or treated. The discharges were being controlled at the time the EPA took over.

As for the oft-repeated rumours that polluted waters were affecting local farmers, the state found that studies of metal uptake in potatoes and alfalfa showed the plants were well within the range of average crops of this type grown in other states. And as for reports that discharges from Summitville had killed fish in the Alamosa River system, the state found that cyanide could not have been present in sufficient concentrations to kill fish or anything else. State officials said the alleged damage was more likely caused by copper-bearing discharge from an old adit, which was not covered by the mine’s discharge permit.

What is often forgotten in the Summitville story is that the mine has operated intermittently since the turn of the century, including a period when it was under government control. Drainage from historic underground workings had caused problems long before Galactic revived the site as an open-pit mine. Adding to this was ordinary erosion from several stocks underlying the region, consisting mostly of clay, silica and pyrite, which produced acid rock drainage of such severity that local creeks were named “Alum” and “Bitter” and known to be inhospitable places for fish. State geologists found that the clay-silica mixture led to rapid erosion, while pyrite created acid rock drainage, even prior to mining.

Summitville’s main problem was that it could not meet silver limits for its treated water, which meant that the same water had to be treated over and over again, at great cost. Bureaucrats were deaf to pleas that the water standard, Class I fishery, was clearly inappropriate for the waters downstream of the mine — water that, owing to natural weathering and historic mining, was never of fishery quality.

The EPA also was consistently unable to meet those high standards, but the agency did manage to get an amended agreement in order to discharge its “polluted” water. The agency then set about “cleaning up” the site, only it didn’t have the expertise to do the job. It ignored public comment and input from mining organizations and set about doing things that were either unnecessary (such as moving waste piles into mine pits at fees three times the going rate) or downright ridiculous (such as plugging old adits only to have acid-rock discharges come out elsewhere).

Almost three years ago, the U.S. government filed suit against Friedland in hopes of recouping an estimated US$152 million of cleanup costs. As part of this exercise, they convinced an Ontario court to freeze Friedland’s Canadian assets. That order was overturned days later, when a judge found that the U.S. government had misrepresented facts underlying its case. Friedland has since turned the tables, and is now suing the U.S. government for its role in previous mining, as well as the EPA’s own failure to meet the environmental standards prescribed for the mine site. Because the EPA “cleanup” was anything but, it is in the public interest for the U.S. government to settle the dispute and arrive at a fair settlement.

All this is not to say that Summitville was mining’s finest hour, or that Galactic and Friedland should escape their fair share of responsibility. The mine was a financial, technical and environmental fiasco. It was over-promoted, never made a dime, and there were major engineering mistakes and design flaws (including a critical water balance error). Construction was both hurried and bungled. Summitville was a mine that should never have been built.

But it was not an environmental disaster, at least not until the EPA took over the site and began a cleanup with about as much finesse as the Keystone Cops. The mining industry tried repeatedly to help, at no charge, and offered water treatment plants and expertise. But the EPA thumbed its nose and squandered huge sums of public funds pretending to clean up something when in fact it was exacerbating previous problems and causing new ones.