FOREST SERVICE ABANDONED / INACTIVE MINE LAND INVENTORY AND VARIOUS APPROACHES TO MINE LAND CLEAN-UP

• Jurisdiction: United States

Cleaning up the Public Domain: The Next Frontier
(Mar 1996)
CHAPTER 1A
FOREST SERVICE ABANDONED / INACTIVE MINE LAND INVENTORY AND VARIOUS APPROACHES TO MINE LAND CLEAN-UP
Tim Buxton
Forest Service Rio Grande National Forest
Saguache, Colorado

Introduction

• Rocky Mountain Region — USDA Forest Service

• Inventory Programs

• Approaches to clean-up work at various sites

Regional Program

• Abandoned and Inactive Mines Inventory program

— identifying environmental problems and physical hazards

— conducted by partnership with other entities

• States

— South Dakota — SD School of Mines — tentative results

— Wyoming — US Bureau of Mines — tentative results

— Colorado — CO Geological Survey

• Discovery process — office, field, document

• Rating Systems — Guidelines

• Results — 9,667 sites through 1994

• General conclusions of Inventory Program

— Small percentage of sites on Forest Service-administered federal lands are active polluters

— Forest Service responding to inventory data — response costs unknown

— Data apply only to Forest Service-administered federal lands

Processes at specific mining sites

• Forest Service CERCLA authority

— Lead agency on non-NPL sites (EO 12580; 7 CFR 2.60)

— Federal non-PRP status

• Sites

— Adjacent to private lands — Annie Creek — PRP funded, EPA administered

— Within NPL site — Little Bear & Minnesota mines — FS/EPA partnership

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— No PRPs available for site on Forest — Spokane Mine — FS funded/conducted

— Bonanza Mining Area...