LEADVILLE – The EPA says it will begin pumping water trapped inside a mountain within seven to 10 days in an attempt to prevent a catastrophe that could kill hundreds.
The move will significantly reduce the risk of a blowout at an old mine drainage tunnel, according to Lake County Commissioner Ken Olsen.
This concern was first raised publicly by 9Wants to Know on Wednesday.
Lake County Commissioners met via telephone with state and federal agencies on Friday. All agreed that pumping water out of the mountain was the fastest way to reduce danger to residents and the environment.
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"I am pleased with our progress today," said Olsen of the short-term decision to use the preexisting Gaw Shaft to pull clean water from the mountain.
After the water is removed from the Gaw Shaft, it will be pumped into California Gulch downstream from the California Gulch Superfund site.
Water inside the mountain consists of clean water in parts and water contaminated with heavy metals in other parts.
Commissioners worry both types of steadily rising water inside the mountain, combined with its increasing pressure, could cause water to blow out from a drainage tunnel.
Commissioners say an uncontrolled blowout of more than 1 billion gallons of contaminated water could kill more than 100 Leadville residents and contaminate the Arkansas River.
The volume of water became trapped inside the mountain when parts of a drainage tunnel collapsed. It is not known when the collapse occurred, but the EPA says it has been working toward a solution to the drainage tunnel blockage since 2001.
The cost of the pump will be about $94,000, according to Olsen. He said, at this time, he's unsure of who will pay the cost of the pump.
The pump will run 24 hours a day once installed and will be only a temporary solution.
Lake County Commissioners along with state and federal agencies will meet next week to come up with a long-term solution.
Earlier on Friday, Gov. Bill Ritter wrote a letter to President Bush, urging him to take immediate action to avoid the potential disaster.
In the letter to the president, Ritter wrote, "Conceivably, such a release could result in the loss of life, cause untold human misery, threaten the drinking water supplies for half a million people ... leaving the area degraded for decades."
Ritter asked the president to direct the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which owns the tunnel, to help state and local officials start drilling wells into the tunnel to relieve the pressure on the tunnel and pump the contaminated water to the bureau's water treatment plant.
Ritter wrote his letter after receiving a letter from Sen. Tom Wiens (R-Castle Rock) about the impending disaster. Earlier this week, Lake County commissioners also declared an emergency in the area due to the problem.
"For some years, the state of Colorado, joined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, has expressed to the Bureau of Reclamation our increasing fears of a potentially catastrophic release of water to the Arkansas River that could ... threaten human life in and around the town of Leadville and contaminate the river all the way to the Pueblo reservoir," Ritter wrote to President Bush.
Click here to read Ritter's entire letter.
Olsen says permanent solutions could include draining most of the contaminated water, treating it and putting it back into the Arkansas River. That could entail shoring-up the Leadville Mine Drainage Tunnel, which has collapsed, or could entail finding new ways to get into the area with horizontal drilling, according to Wiens.
The overall cost of a long-term solution could cost as much as $10 million, according to Wiens.
"It will be millions of dollars, but it certainly pales in comparison to doing nothing," said Wiens. "This is their property, they made the mess, they need to clean it up."
Wiens learned about the looming disaster two years ago after Lake County Commissioners contacted him. Wiens was the only lawmaker in Colorado to take action, according to the commissioners.
Wiens said he will travel Saturday with Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colorado) to Leadville and both plan to meet with county commissioners.
Sen. Wayne Allard (R-Colorado) plans to meet with local, state and federal agencies for a progress report next Thursday.
"It's a great first start. It's just a shame we had to go through all of the exercises we've gone through to try to get people's attention on this," said Wiens.
Wiens put up thousands of dollars of his own money to hire documentary filmmakers to videotape the threatening environmental disaster.
Over two days this week, a film crew documented water so contaminated with heavy metals from old mines that it runs brown and orange out of the mountain.
The crew interviewed residents and commissioners.
"We wanted to record all of this and put it on the web to get further support and to make sure we put pressure on the federal government to do the right thing," said Wiens.
The documentary is posted on his Web site www.savetheArkansasRiver.org and, according to Wiens, will be posted soon on YouTube.
"It's tremendous to see the fruits of our efforts here and to see a federal bureaucratic agency move on a dime like this, it's just a shame they haven't done it over the last several years," said Wiens.
The state, local officials and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have been trying to reach an agreement with the Bureau of Reclamation since 2001.
Permanent solutions could include draining most of the contaminated water, treating it and putting it back into the Arkansas River. That could entail shoring-up the Leadville Mine Drainage Tunnel, which has collapsed, or could entail finding new ways to get into the area with horizontal drilling, according to Wiens.
FOXNEWS.COM HOME > U.S.
Colorado Town Fears Avalanche of Water
Friday, February 15, 2008
DENVER — More than 1 billion gallons of contaminated water — enough to fill 1,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools — is trapped in a tunnel in the mountains above the historic town of Leadville and threatening to blow.
Lake County Commissioners have declared a local state of emergency for fear that this winter's above-average snowpack will melt and cause a catastrophic tidal wave.
The water is backed up in abandoned mine shafts and a 2.1-mile drainage tunnel that is partially collapsed, creating the pooling of water contaminated with heavy metals.
County officials have been nervously monitoring the rising water pressure inside the mine shafts for about two years. An explosion could inundate Leadville and contaminate the Arkansas River.
"It could come out, we just don't know where," county Commissioner Carl Schaefer said. "We're seeing changes and we're very concerned. We're not crying `Chicken Little' here."
State and federal officials agreed Thursday to conduct a risk assessment before taking any action. Critics said something should be done immediately to ease the pressure.
Peter Soeth, a spokesman for the Bureau of Reclamation, which acquired the drainage tunnel in 1959, said there was no immediate threat to Leadville's 2,700 residents.
Officials point out that a speaker system to broadcast evacuation notices has already been installed near a mobile home park that has 300 residents near the tunnel's portal.
The tunnel normally drains water that seeps into some of the hundreds of abandoned mine shafts and other mine workings in the mountains east and south of Leadville and deposits it into the East Fork of the Arkansas River about a mile north of town.
The Environmental Protection Agency raised concerns about the situation in letters sent to the Bureau of Reclamation, which has been assessing the concerns.
"Due to the unknown condition of the tunnel blockage and the large volume of water behind the blockages, we are concerned that an uncontrolled, potentially-catastrophic release of water to the Arkansas River from (the tunnel) is likely at some point," said one EPA letter sent in November.
Stan Christensen, an EPA expert on the tunnel, said the likelihood that something catastrophic can happen increases the longer nothing is done.
A water treatment plant at the foot of the tunnel removes toxins and heavy metals such as zinc, cadmium and manganese before discharging the water into the Arkansas River. The mobile home park is near the treatment plant.
New springs and seepages have appeared at California Gulch, which sits below the plant. Tests have shown high levels of heavy metals typically found in mine discharge, leading officials to conclude the trapped water is finding ways out.
"No one can tell us what it means," said Jeffrey Foley, Lake County's emergency management director. "It's finding fault lines and it's pouring mine-contaminated water into the Arkansas."
The EPA's Christensen said the water table is rising regionwide and that his agency can't immediately reach the same conclusion.
Leadville, which sits at 10,200 feet of elevation and some 100 miles west of Denver, rose to national prominence and attracted thousands of people after a gold rush in 1859. After the gold ran out, silver became the dominant mining industry.
Later, a mine that sits beneath 13,000-foot mountain peaks began shipping molybdenum ore in 1915. Miners have recovered 946,000 tons of molybdenum, used to harden steel, worth about $4 billion. The Climax mine closed in 1995.
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