Superfund Money to Clean 'Mouth of the Beast' (Iron Mtn. Mine)

[depakid]

The Iron Mountain Mine was the largest copper mine at the beginning of the 1900s but now is blamed for the deaths of thousands of fish in what geologists call the "world's worst water." At left, copper-laden water fills a small reservoir in the area of the Iron Mountain Mine cleanup.
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Redding, California - Rick Sugarek knows not to splash through the puddles inside "the mouth of the beast."

That is what he calls the gaping wound near Redding known to everybody else as the Iron Mountain Mine, which is widely regarded by scientists as one of the most polluted places in the world.

The project manager for the Environmental Protection Agency said he once dropped a pen in some running water inside the mine and when he recovered it, it was coated in copper. The water is so acidic that droplets eat holes in blue jeans and dissolve the stitching on boots, much like battery acid.

Sugarek stood Thursday in a shaft once known as the Richmond Mine. It is the source of the toxic stew that has polluted the Sacramento River and its tributaries for more than a century, killed thousands of fish and turned a once-majestic mountain into a hellish breeding ground for nasty bacterial slime that helps create what geologists say is the "world's worst water."

But on this day Sugarek was full of hope, despite the dismal surroundings. The EPA was recently awarded $20.7 million in federal stimulus funds to clean up the heavy metals that have flowed into and accumulated at the bottom of the Keswick Reservoir for decades, threatening fish if not people. Sugarek said the metals have settled to the bottom and do not affect the quality of the drinking water.

The money, combined with $10 million already budgeted for the project, will pay for construction of three pumping stations, piping and the hydraulic dredging of the 170,000 cubic yards of fine toxic metals that to this day coat the bottom of the Spring Creek arm of the reservoir.

Separating out the solids

"What we're trying to deal with now is the 50 years of stuff that has accumulated at the bottom of the reservoir since it was built," said Sugarek, who has been working at the Toxic Superfund site for 20 years. "This is an important management area for California's water supply, and toxic chemicals are flowing down."

Sugarek said the idea is to clean up the site, not restore the ecosystem, so other areas are not contaminated. He said a storm could stir up the sludge in reservoir. The plan then is to dredge the area over the next 18 months, pump the fine sediments up to a treatment center that will separate out the solids. The toxic sediments will then be dried out and dumped into a 12-acre pit on nearby federal land. The pit will be lined with thick plastic sheets and then covered and planted over.

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Dissolving aluminum, skin

"If you go back 1,500 feet, the temperature is 100 degrees, you start to see the acid salts and it smells like sulfur," Sugarek said. "You don't want to use an aluminum ladder because it will just dissolve."

A NASA scientist once sent a robot into the bowels of the mine. It did not return, Sugarek said. Nobody that he knows of has been killed, but Sugarek said a worker testing the water above the debris dam suffered "some exfoliation of the skin" after his rubber raft was punctured and he was forced to swim to safety.
Little help from owner

The elderly owner of the property, Ted Arman, who bought the 3,500-foot mountain from the last mining company for $100,000, has not been much help, proposing a resumption of mining in addition to construction of a 200-foot-tall marble statue of Jesus Christ.

Sugarek said rockslides and dam failures are still concerns.

"We have shut the leak off," he said. "What we're worried about is that a discharge from the debris dam during a big storm could cause an environmental disaster."

More: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/06/13-2

[Lasher]

1. That statue of Jesus would be a great tourist attraction.

Be sure to stop by our concession stand to replace your dissolved clothing.

[wuvuj]

2. The usual association between...

...big tall religious figures and death and destruction? Where'd that crazy man get $100K?

[reggie the dog]

3. I thought this was about Iron Mountain Michigan!