Water Act helps and hinders cleanup

The federal Clean Water Act may be the driving force behind some of the ongoing and planned abandoned mine cleanups, but the powerful law sometimes also stands in the way of getting the job done.

The 1970s law essentially mandates that all rivers and streams should be drinkable, swimable or fishable, and lets individual states develop specific standards that help define those goals, as well as plans to reach them.

But the Clean Water Act also includes strict liability provisions that hold parties responsible for pollution. In the case of volunteer cleanups, the law can sometimes stand in the way of a project. If a volunteer group begins operating a water treatment plant, or diverts the flow of water from an abandoned mine, it can take on perpetual liability for that site. That potentially opens the door for a future lawsuit against that group.

It was these liability provisions that in part prevented operation of a passive water treatment plant at the Pennsylvania mine site in the 1990s. Community members and outside volunteers actually built a small man-made wetlands complex at the site. The idea was to treat the acid mine drainage to remove some of the metals and to clean out the ponds every now and then to dispose of the waste.

But concerns about potential liability, as well as questions about the design and engineering led to abandonment of the project.

Congress has for years been debating so-called "Good Samaritan" legislation, which would address some of those concerns. But so far, federal lawmakers have been unable to nail down a definitive version of such a measure. One sticking point has long been to what role active, present-day mining companies should have in cleanups.

<b>Past cleanup schemes</b>

A water treatment plant under design for the abandoned Wellington-Oro mine is using tried and true technology the remove zinc from French Gulch. But several other ideas for cleanups have been a little more out of the ordinary.

Back in the late 1990s, for example, Frank Burcik, a Front Range engineer, wanted to treat Peru Creek water with a greenhouse high at the site of the Pennsylvania mine. Burcik's concept was put to the test in a mine tunnel in Leadville, where a jungle of plants thrived and removed some of the toxic contaminants from the water.

For a while, his idea for treatment at the Pennsylvania mine garnered local attention, but the logistics of maintaining the operation at the remote Peru Creek site proved too challenging.

Over the years, other potential cleanup ideas have included passing Peru Creek water through special ceramic filters, or using an electrical charge to change the ion balance of the metals, thereby flocking them together and making them easier to remove.