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Register Guard Editorial
Published: Wednesday, September 19, 2007 Register-Guard
The bright orange streambed says it all. And so does a new federal Superfund listing for the poisons-spewing Formosa mine in Douglas County.
As The Register-Guard's Diane Dietz reported Tuesday, the Formosa mine ranked high on the federal toxic hazards ranking system and is expected to be added to the national Superfund list today.
Neither the high ranking nor the listing is a surprise. Located on Silver Butte at the headwaters of an Umpqua River tributary, the abandoned mine releases 5 million gallons of water loaded with toxic metals each year. So far, the acid water has killed at least 15 miles of salmon-rearing stream around Silver Butte, posing what the EPA ominously describes as a "serious, ongoing threat" to humans and the environment.
The federal listing is welcome and comes more than a decade after the state shut down the mine where a Canadian firm, bankrolled by Japanese interests, dug and processed copper on the 76-acre site for 21/2 years in the 1990s. State officials acted after discovering that mining crews were digging nearly twice the permitted tonnage. Since then, the mine's maze of shafts, which the company stuffed with loose tailings before leaving, have become saturated with groundwater, releasing a steady stream of acid mine drainage that flows into the streams below.
Ideally, the cleanup should have begun within a few years after the mine's closure, and prompt action might have saved much of the once-pristine salmon habitat from destruction. But the state Department of Environmental Quality, which was well aware of the situation at Formosa, lacked the resources needed to make that happen.
The federal listing has the full support of the DEQ and Gov. Ted Kulongoski. After years of futile efforts to pursue the foreign companies that financed the Formosa operation, state officials understandably embrace the arrival of a federal agency with the money, manpower and political heft to make certain a cleanup is completed.
Portland environmental activist Larry Tuttle deserves primary credit for the EPA's involvement. Without the extensive efforts of his Center for Environmental Equity, which petitioned the federal government for a Superfund listing, the Formosa mine would have continued to fester for decades.
There may still be a need for center's—and the DEQ's and the governor's—advocacy in years to come. If the EPA is unable to force the corporations responsible for the Formosa operation to clean up the site themselves, then the Formosa project will have to compete with 1,200 other sites across the nations for a finite supply of federal cleanup dollars.
While EPA officials insist the Formosa site would be a funding priority because of its unique ecological focus, in particular the loss of salmon habitat, prompt federal completion of a Superfund cleanup would be an exception to the rule. It's revealing that Tuttle already plans to lobby Oregon's congressional delegation to seek a direct appropriation from the federal budget to expedite the cleanup.
Meanwhile, Congress should approve legislation reforming the nation's 135-year-old General Mining Act, which has left a legacy of polluted mine sites across the West. Sponsored by Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., the bill would bring the law into the 21st century, imposing an 8 percent royalty on the value of minerals extracted, closing environmentally sensitive areas such as roadless areas and wildernesses to mining, installing environmental requirements and creating a cleanup fund.
If the Rahall bill had been on the books in the 1990s, the Formosa nightmare might never have happened, and there would be no bright orange streambed on Silver Butte marking the spot for the federal cleanup to come.
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