The mine has the responsibility to pay for their mistakes of the past. The mining company has to pay for their failure to construct a system that does not pollute useable groundwater. It is not the community’s responsibility to bear any economic burden to filter and clean this polluted water. Water, so saturated with chemicals, that they can’t even use it in their mining operations, yet they have expected us to drink it. When the mine officials were approached in Oct. 2003 about the pollution, they acknowledged that they knew it—they have monitor wells. Yet they were taking no action until we pushed them, and it has been very slow action even with pressure. [See Summary of Promises] If we could see the sludge, it would be an ugly orange and rusty color. However, what we are dealing with is underground, therefore, since we can’t see it, no one gets alarmed. Strangely, the regulations are not as stringent for ground water as surface water. The Sierrita mine owners did pay fines for surface acid drainage in 1995. I’m adding that to the record as I understand that the Aquifer Protection Permit should list all law suits concerning water. There are two effective control and abatement mechanisms to mitigate the migration of a plume that do not use large volumes of water.
Not a single method for controlling the plume is mentioned in the Aquifer Protection Permit. This is totally unacceptable. In fact, Phelps Dodge is given another year and a half to “study” the plume. That plume has been studied since the early 1980’s by the mines’ task force. ADEQ knows exactly where the plume is and what it is doing. Here are the words from an ADEQ Inter-Office Memo dated June 10, 1994.
The mining company knows exactly where that plume is and what it is doing—and if they don’t know it know after over 25 years, then they will never know! They know its six square miles in size. And the mining officials knew exactly where it was when the idea of using the Esperanza field wells was considered. The PD expert said, “Those wells are close enough to the plume that pumping of water will draw the plume over to them.” Even if they don’t know exactly where it has expanded to—they do know that there are high levels of toxic—primary substances that have standards set by the EPA— at the monitor wells on the west side of the tailings dam. The data of these wells show an accumulation of toxic materials including the worst forms of uranium and its radioactive decay products, most notably gross alpha, radium-226 and uranium. All are higher than considered acceptable in drinking water, in some cases four (4) times higher. The figures for these contaminants are already far above what is listed as the acceptable levels in the APP. This indicates that it is imperative that some action be taken immediately. As far as the regulated inorganic chemicals, the testing of these important primary inorganic chemicals, such as mercury, barium, beryllium and copper, has been very sporadic. In the data made available to me by ADEQ (I requested all data), there was only a few tests and most of them were in the early 1990’s. Again, there is no data for these primary inorganic contaminants for wells 11, 12, 13. In the Aquifer Protection Permit there is a lack of testing for inorganic chemicals and radioactive chemicals for these and other monitor wells, especially well 13 which is already showing levels of 10 mg/ltr of Gross Alpha. I will be submitting a written report covering these and other technical issues. [See Map] So Phelps Dodge knows there’s a lot of toxic sludge and they know the effective methods for cleaning the plume. Instead of this idiotic idea of using interceptor wells, which require thousands of gallons of water, to pump and pull and recycle the seepage right back into the pond to seep out again—They need to install capture and clean filtering systems at wells 11, 12, and 13 at the very least. They propose to drill 3 wells in the location of well 13 to determine what toxic chemicals are at what depth. I say put in a capture and clean filtration system that will draw all the sludge up and it won’t matter what depth it is at. In addition, they need to dig a trench on the west side of the tailings pond to catch the sludge, clean it and reuse the water. It’s not rocket science and I’m sure Phelps Dodge engineers know more methods than I could ever dream of. They just have to implement them. The trench would have to be constructed in such a way to improve the stability of the dam. I want to read a short paragraph for the Environmental Protection Agency documents:
Since 1977, the tailings dams in Arizona are not inspected by the Department of Water Resources. The mining lobby pressured the legislature to eliminate them from the standard permitting and inspection. In 1980, there was a major tailings dam failure in Tyrone, New Mexico at a Phelps Dodge mine. This continual seepage of toxic sludge is a case of basic property damage. The mining operation is rendering good useable groundwater into non-usable water, so that if someone does own, or should own in the future, the property next to the mine, they would not have potable water to drill a well on their own property. And the argument that the slurry is not poison just does not hold water! If it is potable, why don’t they just pipe the stuff to their on-site drinking fountains? If you won’t drink it, why have you expected us to do so? You guys at Phelps Dodge need to wake up and see that it’s a new world with a new consciousness. The "behind the back of public" politics that have been prevalent for over 150 years of mining history in Arizona is no longer valid. The question is: Are we going to take a decision to move civilization a step forward or be satisfied to continue our fall backwards—giving first priority to the greed of Corporations rather than the well-being of citizens. After all, stockholders are only about 1% of the world population. Why should we sacrifice the health, well-being and beauty of our community for them? Then there is the issue of the depletion of the aquifer. Phelps Dodge operations at Sierrita and Twin Buttes uses almost 24,000 acre feet of water per year. This translates to mean that they use in one day the amount of water a family of four uses in a year. The aquifer is depleting at the rate of 2 to 3 feet per year. This means that our homes, most of which are on the aquifer, will start cracking, as some already have. With the stepping up of operations due to the price of copper and the possible introduction of more interceptor wells, the water usage will rise. By the way, they basically get free water, so the public is subsidizing the operations, while giving up our water for the future. The world is changing because people are changing. The Corporations are going to have to change also. This is a magnificent world we live in… God blessed America. What are we doing to it? I am really making a strong appeal and a challenge to Phelps Dodge to use their power in a way that is beneficial to everyone not just to stockholders and managers. Expand their horizons and look at the bigger picture. And I am making an even stronger appeal and challenge to ADEQ. Get out of your scientific mind frame that loves to shuffle through piles of data to have “all the answers.” The problem is well known. Now is the time for action . You must have Phelps Dodge put their money into measures that will clean the water rather than produce more and more monitoring and reports. |