U.S. Energy withdraws state app for VCUP

Too many hurdles to overcome…

U.S. Energy has withdrawn its application with the state to enter into a Voluntary Cleanup Plan (VCUP) at the old Keystone mine.
Doug Jamison, the Superfund/Brownfields unit leader of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE), said that after looking at the water treatment situation with USE and considering the fact that contaminated water coming from the mine was currently being treated with a wastewater treatment plant on Mt. Emmons, the VCUP “might not have been the appropriate tool. There were a lot of hurdles to overcome and a lot more information was needed for the VCUP route.”

USE, which controls molybdenum mining rights on Mt. Emmons, is legally obligated to treat the contaminated water coming from the Keystone mine. Given that running the wastewater treatment plant, located about three miles west of the town, costs about $2 million annually to operate, USE was looking at a VCUP. The USE proposal was to essentially plug the mine and use a passive water treatment system.
Several local organizations keeping an eye on the mine situation—including the Red Lady Coalition, the High Country Conservation Advocates and the Coal Creek Watershed Coalition—had commented to the state that they had concerns with that plan.
The fear was that once the mine was plugged, the contaminated water would leak out in places where treatment wasn’t available and could possibly contaminate area wells and even the Crested Butte drinking water supply. It could also potentially have a meaningful adverse impact on the local amenity-driven economy.
In a letter from USE president Mark Larsen to Jamison, the company states that the CDPHE “imposed new requirements on U.S. Energy… Most significantly, recent comments on the Keystone VCUP and related monitoring and contingency plans would, as a practical matter, impose strict liability for non-point source discharges anywhere in the vicinity of the historic Keystone Mine. There is no legal basis for imposing these additional burdens, and they render the voluntary clean-up of the historic Keystone Mine untenable.”
 “We are pleased that the CDPHE considered the issues raised by the RLC and HCCA in our letter to be of sufficient concern to raise the bar in the VCUP process,” said RLC President Bill Ronai. “Realistically, a VCUP would not have been cheap and if it wasn’t going to be better than the current situation with a wastewater treatment plant, there was no reason to approve the VCUP.”
The RLC and HCCA jointly hired Integral Consulting, Inc. to conduct an evaluation of the VCUP proposal. The company is considered an expert with such projects and the company highlighted several red flags with the proposal as it was submitted.
“U.S. Energy’s decision to withdraw its application demonstrates that the company is not willing to take the necessary steps to ensure our water and community would be safe from potentially devastating contamination,” said HCCA public lands director Alli Melton. “U.S. Energy stated in its letter that it intends to focus on permitting, construction and mining on Red Lady. This makes it only clearer that U.S. Energy is not interested in protecting our water and our community from negative health and environmental impacts of mining.”
Jamison said the lack of enforcement provisions in the VCUP was of concern to the state agency as well as the unknown of where the water would travel once the mine was plugged. “We have learned throughout the state that once a mine is plugged, the water changes direction. If there wasn’t a water treatment plant treating the water, the VCUP could probably be used to improve the water quality coming from the mine. But the fact is, there is a water treatment plant that treats the contaminated water coming from the mine,” he said.
“If something went wrong with the VCUP proposal, water quality would be degraded and there would be a lag time to correct that situation,” Jamison said. “That could result in a risk to public health and the environment and that was a major concern.”
Jamison said the department was drafting a letter to USE outlining the hurdles with a VCUP. But he said that after recent discussions with the CDPHE, the mining company voluntarily chose to withdraw its VCUP application. “I think the company also started to understand that the VCUP was probably not the appropriate route to take, “ he said.
Larsen concludes his letter to the CDPHE by stating that U.S. Energy “will focus on permitting, construction and mining of the molybdenum resource at the Mount Emmons Molybdenum Project. Subsequently, the historic Keystone Mine will be reclaimed as part of the final reclamation plan for the Mount Emmons Molybdenum Project.”
Last month, HCCA discovered that U.S. Energy had been simultaneously pursuing the next steps for a proposed mine by submitting a Plan of Operations (PoO) for gathering baseline data that would be used for environmental analysis of a proposed mine, Melton stated in a press release. “HCCA submitted a Freedom of Information Request to the U.S. Forest Service requesting the full plan and related documents. This information is essential for assessing the risks and scale of intrusions U.S. Energy is proposing,” stated Melton. “We are eagerly awaiting the results, which will be shared with the community and are vital to ensuring our clean water and community are protected.”
Ronai too took note of Larsen’s conclusion. “The company made it clear in its letter that it will pursue the idea of mining Red Lady and deal with the Keystone mine property as part of that project,” he said. “Honestly, given the current costs, regulations and community concern, I don’t expect that to take place any time soon.”