Many people have seen the recent news about the toxic flood coming down from a mine above Silverton. It’s hit the major news media primarily because it was an idiosyncratic injury to the portal dam at the Gold King Mine caused by a contract crew working for the EPA. That orange pollution of the Animas River hit Durango about 36 hours later and ran thru town in a couple of days. Fortunately none of the river water was being pumped up to Durango’s domestic water storage reservoir because we’ve been having a very wet summer and our primary water sources are well east of the Animas River, several thousand feet up and 20-plus miles out of town.
We had to think twice about watering our tomatoes though, since it’s pumped up from a horse trough next to the river, but the source filling that trough is a spring coming from the western hills above our complex.
This is not to say domestic water sources aren’t affected down-river from Durango. There have been a number of public meetings, some streamed live on the internet, about the emergency conditions caused by this toxic flood.
The Durango Herald said:
Toxic wastewater was released about 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, while an EPA crew was moving dirt from the collapsed entrance of the mine. Investigators underestimated the amount of wastewater that was trapped behind a wall of material. During excavation, loose material gave way, opening the mine tunnel and spilling mineral-rich wastewater. It also washed away a small retention area the crew had built.
There are many stories about how it actually happened and I’m sure one could find more detail on the internet.
IMHO it’s only a matter of concentration of those pollutants because that same mine has been disgorging the same chemicals in the water effluent since I worked in the Sunnyside mine in the 70’s. All the mines in the Silverton-San Juan Mountains produce an effluent that exceeds EPA standards and for the past 20-25 years a group of Animas Stakeholders has been working in the field to remediate the worst of that effluent getting into the Animas River with a great deal of success.
The community of Silverton has been debating how to address the “mining legacy … loading to alpine streams and creeks” with metal residues, and the Animas Stakeholders’ efforts have been successful at holding a Superfund cleanup at bay. At this point, I’m not sure what to think about a Superfund initiative coming to Silverton, but I’m certain that debate will gain energy on both sides as a result of the recent spill.
For those who don’t realize it, I worked underground in the Sunnyside Mine the day before it’s collapse under Lake Emma which flooded the entire mine on June 6th, 1978, and caused the mine to be closed. The old Gold King workings are contiguous to the Sunnyside. The Sunnyside main level portal plug, which was installed to stop contaminated water flows, has now backed up the waters and flooded all the surrounding abandoned mines. Thirty seven years ago the Animas was polluted by a flood from the Sunnyside mine.
