Below is a rough transcript for your convenience only. It is not word for word accurate.


Toxic Mudslide Threatens the Connecticut

Raquel Maria Dillon, 2003-04-23

On a hillside in rural Vermont, just a few miles upstream from the Connecticut River, an ecological disaster threatens. An old copper mine in the town of Strafford, Vermont has been leaching noxious metals into a nearby creek for decades. Now the spring runoff could trigger a toxic mudslide that would destroy homes and release heavy metals into the Connecticut River.

NHPR’s Raquel Maria Dillon has more on the Elizabeth Mine Superfund site.

You can see the heap of mine tailings through the trees from the bottom of this tiny hollow. It’s a steep, orange pile 100 feet tall, covered with a puddle of swampy water on top.

WALKER :
It’s about 100 ft tall, about 37 acres, it’s bright orange, ore is rich in iron.

Bob Walker lives nearby, next to the Ompompanoosuc River. He heads a local Environmental organization called the Elizabeth Mine Study Group. This copper mine operated off and on for almost 200 years until it closed for good in 1958. The Environmental Protection Agency says it’s the most recent pile material that came out of the ground during the 1940s and 50s that poses an immediate threat.

WALKER :
The tailing pile is deposited in the middle of a valley and Copperas brook flows down the valley out onto tailing pile. Right now there’s a concrete culvert that drains that stream thru the pile and out the bottom. That’s what the EPA is worried about. But those concrete pipes aren’t working like they used to. EPA studies show that when the culverts get clogged, water from the valley’s tiny brook builds up inside the tailings pile. And if the culverts collapse, the pile could get waterlogged and slide into the valley below. Dozens of homes could be destroyed. Locals worry that a wave of mud and mine tailings would flow downstream until it reaches the Union Village dam in the middle of Thetford.

As the head of the Elizabeth Mine Study Group, Walker knows this site inside and out. The group hired hydrologists and mining consultants to assess the watershed and measure the poisonous metals in the runoff.

WALKER :
Sound of unfolding map, this is the road that we just walked up. You can walk to the top of the oldest pile and stand on material that was extracted in the early 1800s. The ground is rusty, oxidized metals.

WALKER :
Some of the colors are yellow, ochre, high in sulfur, reds high in iron. Colorful but toxic to a river. It looks like a barren Technicolor moonscape. Walker says a theater group even filmed a performance here. The play was cautionary tale about nuclear holocaust. Sometimes you can even smell sulfur, but environmentalists say the noxious smell is nothing compared to the damage it does to the river. Rain and all the runoff from this small watershed flow over and through the tailings pile.

WALKER :
The problem is it’s a high sulfide deposit area. When sulfides get exposed to air or water during mining process, sulfuric acid, it dissolves into solution and carries them down to the river. The silt and the metals settle to the bottom of the river and impede plant growth. Insects and fish depend on those plants for food and habitat. So there are two problems: first, the immediate threat spring runoff destabilizing the pile which could cause a toxic mudslide. And second, the pollution source that has existed here for decade’s sulfuric acid and toxic metals leaching into the Ompompanoosuc. Local environmental activists compliment the EPA for acting quickly to address stability problems in the tailings pile.

EPA’s site manager Ed Hathaway:

HATHAWAY :
Last fall we went out and collected info about geotechnical influences on pile, ran those analyses over winter and results came back and gave us some startling information that showed that the pile was much less stable than we thought. This spring, the EPA and Vermont’s Department of Environmental Conservation installed grates to keep the culverts clear, and pumps to minimize the puddle of snow melt seeping into the pile.

HATHAWAY :
The site is a well documented ecological hazard, if this release were to occur; it would be an ecological catastrophe. Effect on river environment as far down as White River Junction. Down the Omp. and into Conn. River for several miles. A couple years ago, the EPA recognized the Elizabeth Mine as a federal Superfund site. But the federal money that comes with that dubious honor has not been forthcoming. The EPA’s long term plan to cap the piles and shunt the watershed’s brook around the tailing piles would cost about $16 million dollars. Sharon Francis is the executive Director of the Connecticut River Joint Commission. The intra-state agency includes delegates from both New Hampshire and Vermont. She says the mine is still leaching pollution every time it rains, so the emergency measures aren’t enough.

FRANCIS :
I don’t think it’s something that EPA or anyone else should just stand around and wait for it to get really bad. If that pile goes, that’s going to be much more expensive to clean up. Sediments to dredge from Omp. It’ll be horrendous. EPA officials admit, the grates and pumps are only a short-term solution to address an immediate threat to public health and safety. They say there’s not enough money for the long-term solution. So if it weren’t for the potential destruction of homes and property, the Elizabeth Mine might stay just like it has for decades. Environmentalists say there’s not enough Superfund funding to go around.

David Deen is a River Steward with the Connecticut River Watershed Council.

DEEN :
Federal appropriations for Superfund activities has been reduced and that has moved this situation further down. It has moved it down onto a waiting list.

The Elizabeth Mine site competes with hundreds of landfills, brown-fields, and toxic waste dumps around the country. Congress has to decide how many of these cleanups need urgent action, and how many can wait. Sharon Francis with the Connecticut River Commission blames the Bush Administration.

FRANCIS :
The Admin is cutting back severely on environmental spending. It leaves the Conn. River and people on the Ompompanoosuc wildlife and human habitation in true jeopardy. Actually, the Bush Administration is seeking a 150-million dollar increase for waste removal in its 04 federal budget. But a special tax on polluters expired under Clinton’s watch and Congress hasn’t come up with a new way to replenish the Superfund. So far, there’s no funding for the Elizabeth Mine cleanup for 03. Environmentalists who say they want to bring New England’s rivers back to life, call the Elizabeth Mine one of the top 10 polluting sites in the river’s watershed. River Steward David Deen says he sees the difference every time he wades into the Ompompanoosuc River.

DEEN :
The stones are dyed orange, the only orange stream I’ve seen in 21 years of professional fly-fishing guiding in Connecticut River Watershed.