I was curious about the genesis of stories blaming the EPA for the contamination of the Animas River outside of Silverton, CO. I knew the EPA wasn't in the mining business, but what I wasn't learning from those stories was who, in fact, was responsible for generating the wastes that blew out into the Animas river on Aug. 7.
Doing a little digging I've compiled a brief history of the mine to try to create a timeline in which to understand the current problem. What I've found so far is another riff on the story of mining in the West: Private citizens acquire property rights on land taken from indigenous peoples by force, and exploit it for private commercial gain. Over time, private claims get acquired by giant international corporations. When a problem happens, the government steps in to assist, cleans up and takes over responsibility for fixing the problem caused by private individuals and private enterprise.
I remain fascinated by the people who make these kinds of decisions. This post is meant to be a place where I can document my findings in an attempt to keep the facts, and responsibilities, clear.
1858: Lewis Ralston, part of a Cherokee mining and exploration party on their way to California discovers gold near Clear Creek on the Platt River near Arvada, CO http://web.archive.org/... http://digital.library.okstate.edu/...
1860: "Mountain man" Charles Baker leads a group of prospectors who find traces of placer gold in the San Juan Mountains in at Eureka, Colorado. http://pagosasprings.com/... http://www.thegeozone.com/...
1864: Sand Creek Massacre in southeast Colorado: "Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians! ... I have come to kill Indians, and believe it is right and honorable to use any means under God's heaven to kill Indians. ... Kill and scalp all, big and little; nits make lice." — Col. John Milton Chivington
1873: Bunot Treaty with the Ute nation gave control of "more than four million acres of the San Juan Mountains" to the United States. Source: http://www.irunfar.com/...
1876: US Grant declares Colorado a US state.
1887: Olaf Nelson discovered the Gold King vein, claimed it 1887, worked until his death in 1891. Coincidentally, he worked with Lucien L. Nunn to build "the first commercial high-voltage alternating current power system that both generated and transmitted electricity for commercial use." (http://www.coloradocountrylife.coop/...)
1891: Mrs Nelson, working with Willis Z Kinney (born in New York, settled in Denver), sells the claim to Cyrus W Davis & Henry Soule, financial speculators based in Waterville, Maine, who hire Willis Kinney to work the claim. Cyrus W Davis goes on to be elected to State Legislature of Maine, and then becomes Secretary of State for Maine.
Source: http://www.historycolorado.org/...
Photo Willis Z Kinney: http://digitalmaine.com/...
Kinney House in Denver: http://digital.denverlibrary.org/...
Photo Cyrus Davis: http://digital.denverlibrary.org/...
Cyrus Davis house in Waterville, ME: http://www.watervillemainstreet.org/...
1906: Accident at the mine kills 6 miners, closes until 1910: http://www3.gendisasters.com/...
1910-1916: Otto Mears leases the mining property. By this time, the mine had produced $8,385,407.00 in gold ore. http://www.narrowgauge.org/...
1959: The Standard Metals Corporation purchased the nearby Sunnyside Mine. They continued to occasionally work the mine until the mine filled with water from Lake Emma on the third of June, 1978. The Sunnyside mine closed in 1995, but not before, " 'Sunnyside put bulkheads inside the Sunnyside Mine, (redistributing) the flow of wastewater out of other mine portals. It is a bad flow, very high in the nasty minerals, very acidic,' said (Todd) Hennis, who also owns the Mogul Mine and vowed full cooperation with the EPA on the Gold King cleanup." http://www.denverpost.com/...
Photo: Todd C Hennis, owner, Gold King mine: http://gladstoneadvisory.com/...
Around 1990 - the Colorado Water Quality Control Division (WQCD) starts doing extensive water quality testing in the Upper Animas River in preparation for a water quality standards hearing before the Colorado Water Quality Control Commission.
1991- The Sunnyside Mine closes. It was the last major mine in the area and was easily the biggest. Sunnyside Gold Corp. begins reclamation activities while fighting "Superfund" designation because it would force the company to pay real money to reclaim it's mines (http://www.durangoherald.com/...?)
1994- Animas River Stakeholders Group (ARSG) forms at the urging of WQCD which helps retain a facilitator. Sunnyside Gold is a major contributor, "Though the Superfund designation was avoided, the threat of litigation had an impact — Sunnyside Gold Corporation, a former mine operator, signed a consent decree in 1996 with the state of Colorado to continue to operate a water treatment plant on Cement Creek and clean up several abandoned mines in the Upper Animas Mining District. In exchange, Sunnyside Gold Corp. would be allowed to plug the Sunnyside Mine, located near Gold King Mine, and end its clean-up responsibility in the region. "
http://www.daily-times.com/...
http://blog.yourwatercolorado.org/...
1995- WQCC adopts strict goal based (numeric) standards but delays the effective date to 1998 to allow ARSG to investigate metal sources and strategies to reduce them. ARSG hires a coordinator.
1996- Sunnyside Gold and WQCD sign a consent degree which allows Sunnyside to bulkhead its mine workings and turn off its treatment plant in Gladstone in return for remediating a number of historic mine sites. The goal is to ensure that water quality will be no worse in the Animas River below Silverton than it was before the treatment plant was turned off. Zinc concentrations were used as the surrogate metal by which this goal was determined. The treatment plant is used to treat Cement Creek while bulkheads are completed and the mine pool behind the bulkheads reaches equilibrium.
1997- With ARSG's urging, WQCC grants an extension of the effective date of the water quality standards to 2001. The Dept of Interior begins the Abandoned Mined Lands Initiative to study the effects of abandoned mines on water quality and designates the Animas as one of the two initial, national pilot project sites.
1999- Sunnyside Gold completes approximately 17 remediation projects that it began in 1991. Several other mining companies, US, BLM and ARSG complete several more projects.
2001- ARSG presents a Use Attainability Study (UAA) to WQCC with recommendation for use classifications and water quality standards. WQCC adopts the recommendations. TMDL (Total Maximum Daily Load) are also determined based on the UAA.
2002- Gold King #7 level begins to discharge significant amounts of acid mine drainage.
2003- Sunnyside and Gold King complete another group of remediation sites as part of an agreement to terminate the consent degree including bulkheading the Mogul and Koehler mines. Operation of the treatment plant in Gladstone stops after the mine pool behind the bulkheads reaches equilibrium and water quality below Silverton indicates no statistical degradation has occurred as a result of the consent degree.
2003- ARSG has pilor project Good Samaritan legislation introduced into Congress.
2006- ARSG has completed 13 projects since 199, U.S., BLM and Forest Service have completed 10 projects since 1998. (http://www.animasriverstakeholdersgroup.org/...)
2015: On Aug 5, "The EPA caused an estimated 3 million gallons of mine runoff to pour into the river Aug. 5. A team was working with an independent contractor to assist with investigating the extent of contamination from the abandoned Gold King Mine near Silverton. During excavation, loose material gave way, opening the mine tunnel and spilling heavy-metal tainted water stored behind the encasement.” http://www.durangoherald.com/...
The Sunnyside mine, the ostensible source of the water which flooded the Gold King mine, and then the Animas river, is owned by the 7th largest gold mining corporation in the world, Kinross, based in Toronto, Canada with capitalization estimated at $3.7billion, and holdings in the US, Brazil, Chile, Russia, Ghana, and Mauritania.
Kinross Gold: http://www.kinross.com
Kinross Environmental Guiding principle: http://www.kinross.com/...
Kinross Executive team: http://www.kinross.com/...
Good background article here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
