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“Do you have a plan for what to do if the Leadville Mine Drainage Tunnel (LMDT) water levels don’t go down?”
When Lake County Commissioner Mike Hickman posed this question to Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) and Environment Protection Agency (EPA) officials during a Leadville Mine Pool update via conference call on Aug. 19, the silence on the other end of the line was loud and clear.
Silence.
After months of planning to avert a perceived disaster at the LMDT due to high water levels backed up behind a collapse in the tunnel, the end is in sight. The BOR has drilled a hole into the tunnel, placed a pump inside it, and now sends more than 1,000 gallons per minute from the tunnel to a treatment plant before releasing the water into the Arkansas River.
A permanent pump has been in place for over three weeks now, pumping water from behind the collapse in the tunnel. With resoration efforts to the pump site and surrounding area well underway, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, it would seem. But apparently, if that light should flicker, there is no Plan B.
“We have been really focused on managing this current problem. It will be at least six to 12 months before we can analyze the work we’ve put into this thing, evaluate it with any real clarity,” said Stan Christensen of the EPA.
“We won’t know for a long time if what we’ve done is adequate or not,” said Bill Murphy of the BOR.
“It’s a good question, though, and that is certainly…the next step for us to look at now,” Christensen continued.
Although it has been said many times in the past several months that this solution, facilitated by the BOR and EPA, is not a sure-fire one, nor a fast acting one-in fact, it is often questioned whether there is a problem at all-this point of a plan B seems a little overdue.
Even with the BOR’s treatment facility working at full capacity since June, when the initial pump was installed, experts have predicted that it will be at least December before all factors can be considered well enough to determine the effectiveness of the pumping solution.
Perhaps by then an alternative will be in place.
With the release of the BOR’s Risk Assessment in July, stating that there is no danger of a disaster or flooding at the LMDT, many fears have been quelled. But the Board of County Comissioners (BOCC) has not been so easily convinced.
The BOCC has not yet lifted the state of emergency that it declared in February in response to the increasing concerns from the BOR, EPA and other federal and state agencies for the potentially disastrous consequences of an elevated mine pool. The commissioners have stated that they are awaiting a response from the EPA before doing so.
The EPA has yet to formally respond to the BOR’s risk assessment, and the EPA has a corps of engineers examining the BOR’s findings. The corps of engineers is expected to release a report on the LMDT risk to the EPA by Aug. 27 and the EPA will release a response of its own, based on that report, to the public in early September.
Meanwhile, the BOR is following through on several reccommendations made by independent engineers who worked on its risk assessment to better prepare for an emergency-one it finds highly inprobable.
It isn’t clear to anyone, even the BOR, it seems, whether to take the LMDT situation seriously anymore. But just in case, everyone is.
Kay Doan is the reporter for the Leadville Chronicle. She may be reached at kdoan@leadvillechronicle.com.
When Lake County Commissioner Mike Hickman posed this question to Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) and Environment Protection Agency (EPA) officials during a Leadville Mine Pool update via conference call on Aug. 19, the silence on the other end of the line was loud and clear.
Silence.
After months of planning to avert a perceived disaster at the LMDT due to high water levels backed up behind a collapse in the tunnel, the end is in sight. The BOR has drilled a hole into the tunnel, placed a pump inside it, and now sends more than 1,000 gallons per minute from the tunnel to a treatment plant before releasing the water into the Arkansas River.
A permanent pump has been in place for over three weeks now, pumping water from behind the collapse in the tunnel. With resoration efforts to the pump site and surrounding area well underway, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, it would seem. But apparently, if that light should flicker, there is no Plan B.
“We have been really focused on managing this current problem. It will be at least six to 12 months before we can analyze the work we’ve put into this thing, evaluate it with any real clarity,” said Stan Christensen of the EPA.
“We won’t know for a long time if what we’ve done is adequate or not,” said Bill Murphy of the BOR.
“It’s a good question, though, and that is certainly…the next step for us to look at now,” Christensen continued.
Although it has been said many times in the past several months that this solution, facilitated by the BOR and EPA, is not a sure-fire one, nor a fast acting one-in fact, it is often questioned whether there is a problem at all-this point of a plan B seems a little overdue.
Even with the BOR’s treatment facility working at full capacity since June, when the initial pump was installed, experts have predicted that it will be at least December before all factors can be considered well enough to determine the effectiveness of the pumping solution.
Perhaps by then an alternative will be in place.
With the release of the BOR’s Risk Assessment in July, stating that there is no danger of a disaster or flooding at the LMDT, many fears have been quelled. But the Board of County Comissioners (BOCC) has not been so easily convinced.
The BOCC has not yet lifted the state of emergency that it declared in February in response to the increasing concerns from the BOR, EPA and other federal and state agencies for the potentially disastrous consequences of an elevated mine pool. The commissioners have stated that they are awaiting a response from the EPA before doing so.
The EPA has yet to formally respond to the BOR’s risk assessment, and the EPA has a corps of engineers examining the BOR’s findings. The corps of engineers is expected to release a report on the LMDT risk to the EPA by Aug. 27 and the EPA will release a response of its own, based on that report, to the public in early September.
Meanwhile, the BOR is following through on several reccommendations made by independent engineers who worked on its risk assessment to better prepare for an emergency-one it finds highly inprobable.
It isn’t clear to anyone, even the BOR, it seems, whether to take the LMDT situation seriously anymore. But just in case, everyone is.
Kay Doan is the reporter for the Leadville Chronicle. She may be reached at kdoan@leadvillechronicle.com.
