Posted by Sherman in Idaho [72.47.153.105] on Wednesday, November 06, 2013 at 13:30:17 :
In Reply to: "remediated" posted by jerryinidaho [24.223.94.244] on Wednesday, November 06, 2013 at 13:10:33 :
The "redediation" project in the silver valley has been going on for 30 years and a couple years ago they came up with a revised plan that will keep it going for another "50-90" years. In their dreams.
All the money comes from superfund suits against the mining companies, not from the taxpayers. Anyone who has ever swung a pick anywhere in this valley is on the hook for all the pollution. When they drive a company totally out of business, they take all their remaining assets as a "settlement". That's how they got most of Asarco's US properties. All in all, they have something like $1.3 billion in the trust fund, which coincidentally just happens to be almost exactly what they estimate the "cleanup" will cost. Hecla was the last to settle, and I believe they kicked in something like $200 million a couple years ago.
"Remediation" mostly consists of hauling dirt from one pile to another and back again, covering dirty dirt with clean dirt, and hydroseeding it. That's what they did to the slag pile.
I have to believe that sometime in the next 90 years, the EPA is going to go away, and some guy with a loader is going to start digging into that slag pile again.