A plan to extract gold from mining waste splits a Colorado city with a legacy of air pollution

LEADVILLE, Colo. — Rust-colored piles of mine waste and sun-bleached picket derricks loom above the historic Colorado mountain city of Leadville — a legacy of gold and silver mines polluting the Arkansas River basin greater than a century after town’s increase days.

Enter a fledgling firm referred to as CJK Milling that desires to “remine” a number of the waste piles to squeeze extra gold from ore discarded a long time in the past when it was much less useful. The waste could be trucked to a close-by mill, crushed to powder and bathed in cyanide to extract hint quantities of valuable metals.

The proposal comes amid surging world curiosity in re-processing waste containing discarded minerals which have grown extra useful over time and might now be extra readily eliminated. These embody valuable metals and minerals used for renewable energy that many international locations together with the U.S. are scrambling to safe.

Backers say the Leadville proposal would velocity cleanup work that’s languished for many years underneath federal oversight with no foreseeable finish. They converse in aspirational tones of a “round financial system” for mining the place leftovers get repurposed.

But for some residents and officers, reviving town’s depressed mining trade and stirring up waste piles harkens to a polluted previous, when the Arkansas was dangerous to fish and at instances ran crimson with waste from Leadville’s mines.

“We’re sitting in a river that 20 years in the past fish could not survive,” Brice Karsh, who owns a fishing ranch downstream of the proposed mill, mentioned as he threw fish pellets right into a pool teeming with rainbow trout. “Why go backward? Why danger it?”

Leadville – house to about 2,600 individuals and the Nationwide Mining Museum — payments itself as America’s highest metropolis at 10,119 ft (3,0084 meters) above sea degree. That distinction helped town forge a brand new identification as a mecca for excessive athletes. Endurance race programs loop by close by hillsides the place thousands and thousands of tons of discarded mine waste leached lead, arsenic, zinc and different poisonous metals into waterways.

The driving power behind CJK Milling is Nick Michael, a 38-year mining veteran who characterizes the undertaking as a technique to give again to society. Standing atop a heap of mining waste with Colorado’s highest summit, Mount Elbert, within the distance, Michael says the rubble has the next focus of gold than many massive mines now working throughout the U.S.

“Within the previous days, that wasn’t the case,” he mentioned, “however the tables have turned and that’s what makes this financial … We’re simply cleansing up these small piles and transferring on to the subsequent one.”

Metropolis Council member Christian Luna-Leal grew up in Leadville — in a trailer park with poor water high quality — after his mother and father immigrated from Mexico.

Deprived communities have all the time borne the brunt of the trade’s issues, he mentioned, courting to Leadville’s early days when mine house owners poorly handled Irish immigrants who did a lot of the work. Virtually 1,300 immigrants, most Irish, are buried in paupers graves in an area cemetery.

Stirring up previous mine waste might reverse a long time of cleanup, Luna-Leal mentioned, once more fouling water and threatening the welfare of residents together with Latinos, many dwelling in cell properties in town’s outskirts.

“There’s a real worry … by loads of our neighborhood that this isn’t correctly being addressed and our issues should not being taken as critically as they need to be,” Luna-Leal mentioned.

The corporate’s course of doesn’t eliminate the mine waste. For each ton of ore milled, a ton of waste would stay – minus just a few ounces of gold. At 400 tons a day, waste will stack up shortly.

CJK initially deliberate to make use of a large open pit to retailer the fabric in a moist slurry. After that was rejected, the corporate will as an alternative dry waste to putty-like consistency and pile it on a hill behind the mill, Michael mentioned. The open pit downslope would act as an emergency catchment if the pile collapsed.

The magnitude of mining waste globally is staggering, with tens of hundreds of tailings piles containing 245 billon tons (223 billion metric tons), researchers say. And waste technology is growing as firms construct bigger mines with decrease grades of ore, leading to a larger ratio of waste to product, in keeping with the nonprofit World Mine Tailings Failures.

This month, gold costs reached document highs, and demand has grown sharply for vital minerals akin to lithium utilized in batteries.

Economically favorable circumstances imply remining “has caught on like wildfire,” mentioned geochemist Ann Maest, who consults for environmental organizations together with EarthWorks. The advocacy group is a mining trade critic however has cautiously embraced remining as a possible technique of hastening cleanups by non-public funding.

CJK Milling might assist do this in Leadville, Maest mentioned, however provided that completed proper. “The rub is that they wish to use cyanide, and at any time when a neighborhood hears there’s cyanide or mercury they understandably get very involved,” she mentioned.

Overseeing Leadville’s water provide is Parkville Water District Supervisor Greg Teter, who views CJK Milling as potential answer to water high quality issues.

Many waste piles sit over the district’s water provide, and Teter remembers a blowout of the Resurrection Mine compelled residents to boil their water as a result of the district’s therapy plant could not deal with the filth and particles.

Extra fixed is the polluted runoff throughout spring and summer season, when snowmelt from the Mosquito mountains washes by mine dumps and drains from deserted mines.

Each minute, 694 gallons (2,627 liters) on common of contaminated mine water flows from Leadville’s Superfund site, in keeping with federal information. Most is saved or funneled to therapy amenities, together with one run by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

As much as 10% of the water isn’t handled — tens of thousands and thousands of gallons yearly carrying an estimated six tons of poisonous metals, U.S. Environmental Safety Company information present. By comparability, throughout Colorado’s 2015 Gold King Mine catastrophe that fouled rivers in three states, an EPA cleanup crew inadvertently triggered launch of three million gallons (11.4 million liters) of mustard-colored mine waste.

So long as Leadville’s piles stay, their potential to pollute continues.

“There are actually hundreds of mine claims that overlay one another,” Teter mentioned. “We don’t need that going into our water provide. Because it stands now, all of the mine dumps are … in my watershed, upstream of my watershed, and in the event that they take away them, and take them to the mill, that’s going to be beneath my watershed.”

EPA lacks authority over CJKs proposed work, however a spokesperson mentioned it had “potential to enhance website circumstances” by supplementing cleanup work already being completed. Transferring the mine waste would get rid of sources of runoff and will cut back the quantity of polluted water to deal with, mentioned EPA spokesperson Richard Mylott.

Different examples of remining within the Rockies are in East Helena and Anaconda, Montana and in Midvale, Utah, Mylott mentioned. Tasks are proposed in Gilt Edge, South Dakota and Creede, Colorado, he mentioned.

Regardless of the mess from Leadville’s historic mining, Teter spoke proudly of his trade ties, together with working in two now-closed mines. His son in regulation works in a close-by mine.

“If it weren’t for mining, Leadville wouldn’t be right here. I might not be right here,” the water supervisor mentioned.

“There aren’t any energetic mines in our watershed, however I’m assured in what CJK has deliberate,” he mentioned. “And I’ll be capable to regulate no matter they do.”

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Comply with Brown on X, previously Twitter: @MatthewBrownAP