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Mine Listed as Federal Hazard
By Diane Dietz, The Register Guard. Published: Tuesday, September 18, 2007 Register-Guard
Cleaning up the Formosa site could take up to six years
The toxics-spewing Formosa mine in Douglas County will make the national Superfund list Wednesday.
An Environmental Protection Agency official confirmed Monday that the mine ranked high on the federal hazards ranking system.
Water running out of the defunct and abandoned mine contains high levels of life-killing metals, and fish are absent in the upper reaches of nearby streams that gather the mine's waters and flow into Umpqua River tributaries, according to the EPA.
"This one is really high profile for us," said Denise Baker-Kircher, the EPA's newly appointed Formosa cleanup manager. "We want to take care of it as quickly as possible."
The cleanup may take as long as six years, and it could cost $10 million to $20 million, Baker-Kircher said. She said money will be available for the cleanup when the time comes.
"In fact, I have a site right now that's $35 million. That (sum) wouldn't be unusual at all," she said.
The pollution problem at Formosa arose in the 1990s, after a Canadian firm with Japanese backers dug and processed copper for 2 1/2 years on the 76-acre site.
The state shut the operation down when it discovered managers were operating beyond the permitted limits, state records show. Crews were digging almost twice the tonnage the permit allowed.
As the company retreated, it stuffed loose tailings into the mine's honeycomb of shafts and sealed up the portals.
But water runs through the mine, and it saturated the tailings, turning the mine into an ideal caldron for brewing acid mine drainage, which eventually ran out of the main portal.
Each year, the mine pours out about five million gallons of acid water, which carries about 30,000 pounds of dissolved copper and zinc.
The metals-laden water has killed about 15 miles of salmon- rearing stream around Silver Butte, the mountain bearing the Formosa mine, according to the state Department of Environmental Quality.
The acid water continues to run and kill all the tiny organisms, and so no fish live in the streams.
Baker-Kircher's job is to figure out how to stop the flow. "It's still too early in the day to talk about how we would do it," she said.
The EPA got involved two years ago after Portland environmental activist Larry Tuttle petitioned the federal agency to take Formosa out of the hands of the DEQ.
The DEQ had completed extensive research on the mine site but had no money to proceed to a final cleanup, state officials said.
Tuttle said he was "pretty darn happy" to learn Monday that the Superfund listing is official.
Tuttle has been birddogging the mine for nearly a decade through the two-person organization he runs with his son called the Center for Environmental Equity.
"It's an accomplishment," he said. "We reached a goal we weren't sure we were going to reach, so we feel really good about that."
Tuttle said the listing gives him several avenues to pursue toward a final cleanup.
The site now qualifies for Superfund cleanup dollars, though it will have to vie with about 1,200 other sites nationally for whatever Congress puts in the federal cleanup fund. About 15 of those sites are in Oregon.
But Tuttle said the listing also gives him leverage to approach Oregon's congressional delegation to seek a direct appropriation from the federal budget for the cleanup.
"We'll start pushing ahead to find some real money," Tuttle said.
At the DEQ, meanwhile, project manager Greg Aitken—who tried to find a remedy for the site for years—said the listing could mean real progress at Silver Butte.
The DEQ and Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski supported the EPA's decision to place the mine on the nation's most polluted list.
"This site isn't being listed superficially," Aitken said. "The EPA is committed to doing what they can sooner rather than later on this, so that's encouraging."
Baker-Kircher said her first step is to begin talks with two Japanese conglomerates—Washi Koshan Co. and Marubeni Corp.—who helped finance the early 1990s mining.
Her goal is to figure out whether the corporations are potentially liable for the cleanup costs. If they accept responsibility, the companies can clean up the site themselves, with EPA oversight.
DEQ attorneys tried for several years to identify and engage a responsible party to clean up Formosa, agency attorney Charlie Landman said, but the EPA may have more success.
"It's practically impossible for the state of Oregon to reach outside of the United States. It's hard enough for us to get someone in another state," he said.
A year from now, if the corporations haven't embarked on a cleanup, Baker-Kircher said she'd start the work using Superfund money.
The task is made lighter, she said, by the years of effort put in by state environmental officials.
"They did a lot of good work, so I won't have to start at ground zero, which is a real advantage on this site," she said.
The extensive research and records, in fact, may allow her to reduce the number of years it takes to finish the cleanup, she said.
The EPA would do a feasibility study to look at several proposed fixes for the acid drainage.
It would choose a preferred alternative, seek public comment on its decision and then publish a record of decision before finally getting to work at the site, she said.
Sites do languish without cleanup for years on the Superfund list, but Baker-Kircher said she is confident Formosa won't be one of them. That's because agency brass are paying special attention to the Formosa site, she said.
For years, the EPA only considered sites for the Superfund attention when they were shown harmful to human health.
That's not the case for Formosa. The pollution is primarily an ecological concern: For the dead streams that reared salmon, before the mining was done.
"This site warranted (listing), and EPA headquarters recognized that," Baker-Kircher said. "They said, 'This is such an unusual site. We need you to keep it moving.'"
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