Unusual alliance forms to clean mining wastes

[TransitJohn]

By PAUL FOY
Associated Press writer Thursday, August 19, 2004




ALTA, Utah -- Texas oilman Dick Bass invested nearly every dollar he ever earned -- and borrowed millions more -- to develop his Snowbird ski resort, and he wasn't eager to touch the mining waste he inherited on resort lands.

It could make him liable under federal law for an expensive reclamation.

"I owe so much money my tail is puckered to my tonsils every waking moment," Bass, 74, said Wednesday.

But now Snowbird resort is joining an unusual partnership with the U.S. Forest Service, the conservation group Trout Unlimited and Tiffany & Co. to finish cleaning up the acidic pollution leaching heavy metals into American Fork river.

The $2 million project, taking place on a patchwork of federal and private lands, couldn't be done on federal dollars alone, Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth said.

Bosworth said the Utah partnership could serve as a template for cleanup projects around the West, where mining waste has polluted the headwaters of 40 percent of all watersheds.

"We've definitely made some progress, but a huge amount of work remains to be done," Bosworth said of reclaiming 38,000 abandoned mines on national forest lands. "It will take decades, and we can't do it alone."

The arrangement here is expected to get the blessing -- and a liability waiver -- from the Environmental Protection Agency, which stalled a cleanup plan for American Fork Canyon when the 2001 anthrax attacks diverted agency funding to a U.S. Senate office building.

http://www.casperstartribune.net/articles/2004/08/19/news/regional/22624be94cfed81a87256ef40081f272.txt