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Cleanup of Fishing Streams Could be Hurt by Funding Cuts Residents of western South Dakota have a secret they keep from the rest of the country. While many streams in the West are crowded with fly fishers, South Dakota still has fisheries where anglers can be alone with nature and catch five to ten fish on a lazy afternoon. The Black Hills region boasts some of the most beautiful and productive fishing streams in the state. But cyanide from leach heap mining and toxic runoff from old mine tailings threaten the health of these watercourses. Clear, clean streams were once abundant throughout the Black Hills, but poor mining practices have caused acidity levels to rise in many small streams, harming fish populations and making it unsafe to eat the fish. "Every fishery is valuable. Every stream is valuable," says longtime fly fisherman Dr. Jeff Olsen. "The more fisheries we lose, the more our opportunities decrease."(1) The 6,000-acre Gilt Edge Mine sits atop the ecologically fragile southeastern Black Hills, five miles east of the town of Lead. The streams that flow from here are the headwaters of two watersheds used as cold water fisheries.(2) One of them, Bear Butte Creek, flows directly off the mine, around the towns of Deadwood, Boulder Canyon, and Sturgis, to the Belle Fourche and thence to the Missouri River. Bear Butte Creek is already contaminated with toxic metals and cyanide, and it is only a matter of time before the water downstream becomes polluted as well, preventing even more anglers from fly fishing. Area residents want the contamination to be cleaned up quickly and efficiently, and they are increasingly concerned about the progress of such a cleanup now that the Superfund is running out of money. Ken Wangerud, the EPA project manager of the Gilt Edge Mine Site, confirms many residents' fears, commenting that "[future] funding availability is a question mark."(3) Since 1876, various mining companies have wreaked havoc upon the southeastern Black Hills in the process of extracting gold and other precious metals. Millions of tons of rock have been moved, contaminating fresh water throughout the Bear Butte Creek watershed. Long before environmental laws regulated mining operations, mining companies dumped metal-laden tailings from several of the old mines into Strawberry Creek, which forms the top of the Bear Butte Creek watershed near Deadwood.(4) After nearly a century of mining activity, most of the ore in the Black Hills that was profitable to obtain by traditional methods had been found and extracted. But newer, more efficient methods were being developed. Cyanide leach heap mining was endorsed in the 1970s by the U.S. Bureau of Mines as "a good thing to try"(5) -- an endorsement that "glossed over threats of massive groundwater contamination, which could result."(6) Cyanide, one of the most toxic chemicals on earth, is used in relatively small quantities to form the solution used to extract gold-a process known as leach heap mining. Beginning in the early 1970s, miners began to use this process to extract gold from low-grade ore that was previously too unprofitable to deal with.(7) After digging large pits, heavy duty tarps-called leach pads-are placed in them, and the extracted crushed ore is then piled several hundred feet high in these lined pits. A sodium cyanide solution is sprayed over the rock to attract small specs of gold and gold dust and drag it to a shallow holding pool. The gold is then skimmed from the pool, and the solution is poured over the heap again. The process is extremely efficient, but it poisons local lakes, streams, and aquifers, killing fish and other wildlife as a consequence. Pollution most often occurs when the lining in the pit tears or rainstorms cause the holding pools to overflow and run downstream.(8) Cyanide is persistent in groundwater as well as in metal-laden tailings and abandoned leach heaps.(9) In 1986, the Brohm Mining Company (BMC) received permission to conduct large-scale open pit mining at Gilt Edge.(10) By this time, water downstream from the mine was already contaminated with acid, metals, and sediment loads that accumulated as the piles of mine tailings from an earlier era slowly eroded.(11) But the recent operations by BMC at the old mine site greatly compounded the pollution. BMC left massive quantities of cyanide solution in holding ponds and traces of the chemical on the land. The pools overflow down the Black Hills during large rainstorms and groundwater is threatened. While barriers hinder most land animals from making their way onto the property, birds are still able to congregate around the old holding pool. There are also still "exposed ore zones" which contain heavy metals, including arsenic, cadmium, cobalt, copper, lead, and zinc.(12) Mining operations left millions of dollars worth of cleanup work after most of the companies went bankrupt. BMC added to these costs when they, too, suffered financial difficulties in 1998, leaving the state of South Dakota to maintain the essential water treatment operations using money from the state's Regulated Substance Response Fund.(13) BMC's abandonment of the site has cost South Dakota an estimated $20 million dollars in cleanup costs thus far, and maintaining the water treatment plant in perpetuity will cost an estimated $450,000 a year. This will all ultimately come from taxpayers.(14) Dick Fort of the South Dakota-based ACTion for the Environment says that the EPA's plans for the site seem to be moving along smoothly, and it is "unfortunate that the plans have to be changed when there is a cut in the funding."(15) He wants to see the site cleaned up to ensure that more contaminants do not run off into the lower portion of the watershed, harming viable fishing streams and opportunities for outdoor recreation. Up to Top HOME | Email Signup | About Us | Contact Us | Terms of Use | © 2008 Sierra Club |
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