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| 2/27/2008 2:17:00 PM | Email this article • Print this article |
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| Photo by Ann E. Wibbenmeyer
Lake County Commissioner Ken Olsen (second from left) talks about his concerns with the Leadville Mine Drainage Tunnel blockage. Sitting with him are (from left) Commissioner Carl Schaefer, Olsen, Commission Chair Mike Hickman, U.S. Senator Wayne Allard, State Senator Tom Wiens and Robert E. Roberts, Environmental Protection Agency. The meeting took place Feb. 21 at the state capitol.
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Capitol meeting brings some results
In an opening speech Thursday morning at the Colorado State Capitol, Lake County Commission Chair Mike Hickman called two federal and one state agencies the Three Stooges.
The agencies he referred to are the Environmental Protection Agency, the Bureau of Reclamation and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, which are the three primary agencies in charge of the Leadville Mine Drainage Tunnel.
U.S. Senator Wayne Allard and State Senator Tom Wiens planned the meeting jointly to determine what funds or authority needed to be given by the federal government.
"I'm not sure which stooge I am, but I don't think I'm Curly," said Robert E. Roberts, EPA Region 8 Administrator, right before listing specific actions the EPA was implementing as a short-term solution to the issue.
He announced that pumping in the Gaw shaft would start Wednesday, Feb. 27.
The specific time line for pumping out the mine pool behind the blockage in the LMDT was outlined by Roberts. It would take six weeks to mobilize.
The EPA has allocated funds totaling $1,500,000 to this process, announced Roberts.
Mike Ryan, Great Plains Region Director for the Bureau of Reclamation, outlined actions to be taken by the BOR to mitigate the risk behind the LMDT blockage.
These are the physical steps that will happen while the risk assessment is being done, he said. He called the risk assessment good management, and insisted that it would still be done.
The actions included the testing of the sirens last Friday, preparing the water-treatment plant, currently treating 1,100 gallons per minute, to take up to 2,000 gallons per minute of water if it is needed and starting to contact land owners on the east side of Leadville to obtain permission to lay a water-transport pipe across the land.
Lake County Commissioner Ken Olsen said that the assessor was already looking up these land owners, so Lake County could help the BOR with this process.
The EPA and the BOR were also scheduled to meet Wednesday to plan further for the permanent fix outlined in the EPA's March 2005 report.
Wiens asked Jim Martin with CDPHE to work with Lake County to pump the Canterbury Tunnel and build flumes in Evans Gulch. These were two other mitigating steps Olsen asked to have done simultaneously with the pumping of the Gaw shaft and the LMDT.
A follow-up meeting was scheduled for Thursday to report the progress of the actions outlined at this meeting.
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