SUMMIT COUNTY — Even though the EPA is promising a “free” cleanup of the abandoned Pennsylvania Mine, local officials remain leery of a Superfund listing, citing concerns about potential human and social costs.

“There’s no such thing as a free cleanup,” said County Commissioner Tom Long, after a pair of representatives from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency made their pitch for a Superfund listing during a work session Tuesday.

The EPA officials made it clear that no Superfund designation will occur without a specific request by the county commissioners.

“I rarely say this, but it’s going to be a free cleanup. The federal government and the state are going to pay for this. But we’ve never been successful with shoving this down a community’s throat,” said the EPA’s Gwen Christiansen, an environmental scientist and engineer.

The EPA’s Superfund program provides money for cleaning up sites identified as the most polluted in the country under the National Priorities List. Some communities welcome the help, while others are concerned about the stigma associated with a listing.

Most recently in Colorado, the EPA worked with Creede to tackle mine-related water pollution under an agreement that included language to address community concerns about federal involvement.

How much can it be cleaned?

The mine site, high in the Peru Creek basin, is a big source of pollution that kills fish far downstream in the Snake River. Rainwater and snowmelt trickling through the mine tunnels and piles of waste rock dissolve metals like zinc and cadmium and transport it into the stream.

The entire drainage has been the focus for intensive water-quality studies for decades, but local experts said they aren’t much closer to cleaning up the water than they were when they started.

“There’s been quite a bit of work done up there. It raises as many questions as it answers. It’s frustrating ... Even if you were to eliminate the whole Penn Mine adit, it won’t take care of the problem,” said Lane Wyatt, of the Summit Water Quality and Quantity group.

In a memo to the commissioners, Wyatt said there is some evidence suggesting that it might not be realistic to clean up the watershed to a level that supports a diverse and healthy aquatic life ecosystem.

But EPA officials suggest otherwise. The federal agency has a mandate under the Clean Water Act to try to restore watersheds, and the more federal agencies look at the Pennsylvania Mine and Peru Creek, the more convinced they are that a cleanup is feasible — at a cost.

A “sneak preview” of some EPA cleanup options indicates that a passive treatment system, including a series of wetlands, could cost about $2 million to construct, and about $100,000 annually to maintain.

Potential human health hazard

EPA officials have been soft-pedaling their Superfund proposal. But there is frustration among some federal scientists with the lack of progress, especially after a rainstorm last summer triggered a surge of toxic metals that wiped out trout in the Snake River at Keystone, several miles downstream.

Study after study has concluded that a steady flow of pollution from the mine is killing fish. But rather than tackling the issue head-on, some experts keep calling for yet more studies.

There’s no doubt that naturally occurring minerals in the basin also contribute to the high levels of metals, but eliminating outflow from the mine would be a huge step toward improving water quality in Peru Creek and the Snake River, according to EPA researcher Jean Mackenzie, who lead a team of federal scientists at the site this past summer.

The EPA proposal would bring dollars to the table and a definitive timetable for a cleanup, Christiansen said at the work session.

“You can clean things up to a pretty reasonable standard to where there are benefits to the community,” Christiansen said. “We don’t feel the site is just an eco-risk. We think there is a potential human health component to the risk, and that puts it on a higher priority for funding.”

County officials aren’t so sure that a mine cleanup would do any good.

“If we took out every bit of pollution from Penn Mine, what would be the result? Can we improve the water quality to a point that it will sustain a fishery? At this point, nobody in this process can answer that question,” said remediation expert Brian Lorch, who also heads the county’s open space department.

A kinder, gentler EPA

Despite the slow progress, the county commissioners seemed unwilling to veer from the community-based collaborative effort and hand over control to the EPA.

“This community has been working on the drainage up there for decades. We’re not just going to drop everything and rush into something,” said Commissioner Thomas Davidson.

He raised the issue of the last year’s joint EPA-U.S. Forest Service cleanup of mine waste in Breckenridge, when the feds drew flack for a heavy-handed approach that downplayed community concerns about potential impacts.

Commissioner Long also mentioned the battles in Leadville, where EPA officials faced outright hostility for spending tens of millions of dollars on an ever-expanding Superfund site and fought public sentiment on issues such as historic preservation as the cleanup dragged on for decades.

Christiansen and her colleague, Peggy Linn, said the agency has changed since those days.

“That was a long, long time ago. The EPA is a different animal now,” Linn said.

Davidson expressed some doubt.

“In your mind, it was a long, long (time) ago, but it wasn’t in a galaxy far, far away. It was right next to us,” he said.

In the end, the commissioners decided not to make a move on a Superfund designation for now. Instead, they opted to wait for the results of yet another state study, due in about a year, that would outline various alternatives for treatments.

The Superfund option will remain on the table, according to the EPA.

“It would be good to know what other options are out there,” Christiansen said. “If you all need more time, it’s OK. Today we’re just here to tell you about the (Superfund) program.”



Bob Berwyn can be reached at (970) 331-5996, or at bberwyn@summitdaily.com.