For years, three letters have made people in this old mining town particularly suspicious: EPA.
But when the Environmental Protection Agency released 3 million gallons of wastewater from a nearby historic mine Aug. 5, that suspicion grew into a simmering anger for many of Silverton’s 650 year-round residents.
“How stupid for them to dig around up there and cause a natural disaster,” said Connie Taylor, who grew up watching her father work in the surrounding mines. “I don’t even know how to put it into words,” she added of her reaction to the Gold King Mine release.
In the massive spill’s wake, there has been renewed debate in this sleepy town north of Durango about whether Silverton and its surrounding polluted creeks that flow into the Animas River should be designated as a Superfund site. In the spring of 2014, an EPA regional administrator said that without the listing, funds for long-term remediation would be scarce.
Locals, who decades ago traded their mining equipment for funnel cakes and souvenirs in an economy that now relies almost solely on tourism, are worried such a label could threaten their livelihood and keep away visitors. Some who see the EPA as an attack on their heritage even hope that mining, which began in the late 1800s, will someday return.
“There’s lots of gold and silver left in these mountains,” said Gary Miller, who once worked in a Silverton mine.
Miller thinks the EPA should stop meddling in the old abandoned portals that surround the city, calling the acidic heavy metals that leech from the mines “natural.”
“Silverton has struggled for 20-some years now,” he said, referencing when the last area mine closed.
Superfund sites are on the national priority list for hazardous waste cleanup. In Silverton, those in favor of such a designation hope it would mean a water treatment plant to clean the contaminated fluid flowing down from the mines above.
The Animas River watershed has been identified as one of the most polluted by mine waste in the state. The EPA, in a January report, said one mine was in need of “time-critical removal action.”
Many downstream in Durango, who were horrified when the Animas turned orange after the spill, are calling for Silverton to become a Superfund site in the disaster’s wake. Members of Colorado’s and New Mexico’s congressional delegations, in a letter to President Obama this week, asked to explore the idea of a water treatment plant in the Upper Animas River.
Silverton Standard and the Miner editor Mark Esper, who supports Superfund designation, said those in town who disapprove of the EPA are using the Gold King calamity to confirm their position.
In March, he said, the town council expressed shock and pushed back when the EPA said it wanted to test soil over concerns of contamination from an old smelter. The town’s council still hasn’t decided if it will let the EPA do the testing.
“There is a generational thing,” Esper said about who approves of the EPA and who does not.
Signs of Silverton’s digging heritage — and the damage therein — are omnipresent.
The contaminated orange waters of Cement Creek and the Christ of the Mines shrine, which looks down upon its streets, serve as reminders of what once was.
A theory has been making its way around town that the EPA purposefully caused the Gold King spill to force Superfund on Silverton.
As he rung up customers at his souvenir store, San Juan County Commissioner Scott Fetchenhier said Thursday tourism is the town’s livelihood. Silverton, which just got wired Internet within the past year, is the only town in Fetchenhier’s county.
He declined to say if he opposes a Superfund label but expressed a preference for a stakeholders-based approach to cleaning up festering area mines.
“I have very strong feelings about it,” he said over the sound of his cash register.
Bill Dvorak, who works for the National Wildlife Federation, said politics could play a major role in deciding whether the town becomes a Superfund site.
With all of the media attention surrounding the Animas spill, he says, that could boost the town’s profile.
But such a designation may not mean immediate aid, his colleague, Ty Churchwell, of conservation group Trout Unlimited, says.
“People think this is designated Superfund, the next day trucks and guys in hazmat suits are going to be in town,” Churchwell said, explaining how his organization does not have a position on whether or not the status is granted. “That’s not how it works.”
For at least one old miner in Silverton who worked in the expansive Sunnyside Mine, which has become a major cleanup focus, having some federal help wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
“I think a lot of us realize it’s inevitable,” Dennis Kurtz said of Superfund designation. “When you start thinking about the people downstream, you have to stop looking at your own little tree. You have to be looking at the forest.”
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_28644587/spill-makes-silverton-even-warier-epa