Thursday, November 19, 2009

EPA, BLM dispute slows progress on Superfund site

Bureaucratic snags threaten to slow cleanup of the state's dirtiest abandoned mine, a Superfund site in southern Oregon that leaches 5 million gallons of fish-killing, acid rock drainage into nearby creeks each year. The Formosa mine, a source of copper and zinc until 1993, is on a mix of private and public land managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management about 25 miles south of Roseburg. The BLM says none of the contamination comes from its land, which includes thousands of feet of mine tunnels. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, overseeing the site under the federal Superfund cleanup program, says it's clear that a significant portion does. The EPA won't go forward with the testing needed to begin cleanup on the BLM's portion of the land without the BLM agreeing to pay for it. But the BLM won't agree to pay, saying doing so could set a precedent and put the agency on the hook for cleanup costs estimated to run up to $50 million. The impasse looks likely to delay testing on the BLM land and related cleanup work by at least two years, said Larry Tuttle, an activist who helped put Formosa on the Superfund list in 2007 after a 13-year battle to get it cleaned up...read more

We certainly can't set a precedent that a federal agency must pay to clean up it's own mess. No, no, that money is for those shiny new cars.

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