Local stakeholders lambast US Energy application for VCUP

USE application “materially misleading”?

The High Country Citizens Alliance, the Red Lady Coalition (RLC) and the town of Crested Butte have all submitted comments to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment asking the agency to rescind its original approval of a Voluntary Cleanup Program (VCUP) granted US Energy last fall.

The state agency had approved the proposal by the mining company in October to use the VCUP to clean up the old Keystone Mine site and move toward shutting down the wastewater treatment plant that cleans water flowing into Coal Creek.
The mine company has proposed capping the mine adits, reinforcing the existing tailings ponds and utilizing passive water treatment systems. But when the local stakeholders heard about the decision, they immediately protested loudly and the agency “suspended” the approval. Comments were taken until last Friday and the agency will now review those comments.
“There are a lot of moving pieces with this right now so we don’t have a timeline that we can anticipate to come to a decision,” said CDPHE Superfund/Brownfields Unit Leader Doug Jamison. “Obviously for everyone’s sake we would like to resolve this as quickly as possible. But we want to look over the new comments carefully and evaluate the claims. We’ll be sticking to what the statute allows us to consider. So we will be looking at whether the site is eligible for a voluntary cleanup and whether or not the original application included materially misleading information as is being claimed.”
All three entities claimed to the state that the US Energy application was incomplete and misleading and they contend that the parcel is not even eligible to be considered under a VCUP. They claim the scope of the project is such that the valley watershed could be in danger of being contaminated and the adverse impact on public health and environment could be drastic.
The local stakeholders point out that about half the parcel of land in question under the US Energy application is U.S. Forest Service land. The Forest Service has stated that a VCUP is not appropriate for that property.
“There is no evidence that the VCUP activities on the private land can stand alone and be successful without reliance on the activities proposed for the USFS land.”
“Even though [US Energy] proposes to conduct cleanup activities on USFS land, there is currently no approval to do so. Therefore inclusion in the VCUP application of cleanup activities on land that [US Energy] has no authority over is materially misleading to the point of rendering their application void,” states the HCCA letter.
The RLC points out that the wastewater treatment plant operated by US Energy treats the local water so that pollutants are kept under control to keep the area waters robust for fishing. Heavy metal pollution is a major negative impact in the local streams and questions are raised “about the ability of a proposed, untested, passive remediation system to achieve the effluent limitations met by the water treatment plant,” the RLC letter states.
“Red Lady Coalition strongly urges the Department to disapprove the VCUP application,” the statement summarizes.
HCCA pointed out that the US Energy application omitted even telling the CDPHE that it was in the process of proposing a new molybdenum mining operation on the site. “Despite concrete plans to develop a large scale molybdenum mine on Mt. Emmons that overlaps the entire Keystone Mine VCUP area, there is not one mention of the Plan of Operations in the VCUP applications,” the HCCA letter states.
The letter also states that the US Energy application didn’t tell the agency that the VCUP work would take place within the town of Crested Butte watershed as well as a drinking water supply for other areas in the upper valley.
“A glaring concern at the heart of the proposed VCUP is the high possibility that once plugged at each adit by bulkheads, acid mine drainage from the submerged Keystone Mine workings will find new pathways through the mountain …While its ultimate pathway is unknown, what is clear is the significant risk to human health and environment,” the letter says.
The town of Crested Butte’s letter made it clear any VCUP work would require a Crested Butte watershed permit. Thus the town did not want to comment too much. The town’s correspondence to the state, however, says “HCCA and RLC have raised very serious concerns about [US Energy]’s VCUP application in their respective correspondence to the department.
“As you may know, there is indeed a long history of [US Energy] attempting to negate its obligations to operate the water treatment facility and clean the water coming out of the Historic Keystone Mine,” the town letter continues.
“This is obviously an important situation, given the broad-based community effort used to comment to the state,” said RLC president Bill Ronai.
HCCA’s water director Jennifer Bock points out that the company’s current plan could make things worse for Coal Creek: “Unfortunately, we can’t just plug a hole in the mountain and hope that everything will be okay. There is no understanding of groundwater flows on Red Lady and we don’t want to see what happened in Silverton happen here—where a mining company plugged an old tunnel only to have water that was even more polluted come out of another part of the mountain.”
At the end of November, HCCA wrote to US Energy proposing a collaborative approach to the cleanup. US Energy rejected that approach, asking HCCA to endorse the VCUP on its private land without further review. “HCCA remains open to negotiating with US Energy regarding the VCUP and a permanent solution to mining on Mt. Emmons, but the process must include a two-way flow of information and ideas,” reiterated executive director Greg Dyson.
Jamison said all the comments would be sent along to U.S. Energy as part of the process.
US Energy president Mark Larsen did not respond to an email from the Crested Butte News offering an opportunity to comment on the situation.