Benefits, Risks Fuel Debate on Proposal to Mine Lead in Twain Forest

John Carter, an environmental control engineer for the Doe Run Co., stoops at the edge of the Bee Fork of the Black River, just below one of the company’s lead mines, and dips his hand into the water.

Water spiders on the surface skitter away, revealing a thriving population of snails.

“You can go below any of our operations and find a typical Ozarks stream that doesn’t show any other effects than these,” Carter says with satisfaction.

Carter says environmental conditions near current Doe Run operations are proof that the company operates safely and should be allowed, as it has proposed, to mine a section of the Mark Twain National Forest in southern Missouri.

Others Disagree

But others don’t think so and have come out in force against the proposal, despite its promise of bringing economic improvement.

People such as Kazie Perkins of Willow Springs feel the potential for damage to southern Missouri’s clear spring-fed streams and wooded Ozark hills is too great to risk on new jobs, increased tax revenue or anything else.

“I understand fully the poverty of the region,” said Perkins, who like many in the area is unemployed. She raises bees with her husband, who is a logger. “We’re trying to come up with things to help ourselves. People are grasping at anything. But the answer is not degradation.”

Doe Run employees say they are equally concerned for the environment.

“I’ve read about how we turn creeks into sewers,” said Lanny Evans, manager of technical services. “That’s just not true. This is our home. I raise my kids here. I’m not going to destroy it.”

Largest in North America

Doe Run is the largest integrated lead mining and smelting company in North America, producing 200,183 tons of refined lead last year.

While demand for lead in gasoline, paint, solder and sporting ammunition has declined, the dense metal is increasingly needed for leaded glass in computer and television screens, for so-called “uninterruptive” backup power systems and for batteries.

For 33 years, Doe Run and its predecessor, St. Joe Lead Co., have operated mining and milling operations in a section of the Mark Twain National Forest around Viburnum.

Estimating that the lead in the Viburnum Trend, the source of 90% of the nation’s primary lead now, will be exhausted sometime around the year 2000, Doe Run wants to explore a 120,000-acre section of the national forest farther south.

Last year, the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management gave the company preliminary approval to do so. The agencies released a draft environmental impact statement that recommended allowing mining in about 4,000 acres of the national forest in Shannon, Carter and Oregon counties. A final draft of the statement is due in November.

Seen as Worth the Risk

Acknowledging a potential for harm to the environment, the authors of the study said the economic boost lead mining would mean to the region was worth the risk.

A single mine and mill operation in the proposed lease area would mean about 125 new jobs, Carter said. Beyond that, there’s the revenue to the counties from mineral rent and royalties paid by companies mining in the forest--$3 million last year.

While Missouri’s jobless rate stood at 4.7% in April, the rates of Shannon, Carter and Oregon counties, where many people work in the tourism and timber industries, were 8.7%, 7.8% and 6.6%, respectively.

“We have one of the highest unemployment situations in the area,” said Mike Greene, the superintendent of schools in Winona. “We have abject poverty here and there isn’t anything on the horizon for the community other than the possibility of lead mines.”

Few Backers Speak Up

Nonetheless, the authors of the environmental impact statement have heard from few people who support Doe Run’s lease application.

“Even in the immediate area, we came out with more people who were opposed than were in favor,” said John Woerheide, public affairs manager for the Forest Service. “Public sentiments are overwhelmingly opposing.”

Of about 2,600 people whom the Forest Service heard from--in letters or petitions or at three hearings held around the state--2,401 opposed the lead-mining proposal and 178 were in favor, Woerheide said.

“When you start talking to people about contaminating their water, this gets to be a real public issue,” said Dave Foster, a research biologist for the National Park Service’s Ozark National Scenic Riverways, which opposes the proposal. “Early on, there were a lot more people in favor of the proposal purely on the economic basis. Some of those people switched sides when it was put in the context of dollars versus clean water.”

Tailings Pose Peril

In its environmental impact statement, the Forest Service and the BLM said the greatest risk to water resources was from the disposal of mine tailings, which carry traces of copper, zinc and lead. The tailings are pumped into holding ponds.

Opponents fear there would be leakage into ground and surface water. The Forest Service and the BLM say that’s unlikely because the construction and use of the tailings impoundments would be strictly controlled.

The agencies say the only possibility for contamination would be an accident spilling reagents being transported to the mill or a storage accident at the mill.

In 1977, a dam near Desloge in the Old Lead Belt failed and tailings leaked into the Big River. A study found elevated levels of lead in the river, and state officials warned against eating black redhorse sucker fish caught up to 50 miles downstream.

State Warning Justified

In 1980, St. Joe Minerals Corp., Doe Run’s parent company, reached an agreement with the state to pay for repairs to the dam. Carter noted that St. Joe had built the tailings pond before current strict federal and state regulations were in effect and added that the company’s own study of the river contamination found that the state warning was unwarranted.

“It’s simply wrong” that mining is environmentally degrading, insisted Mark Taylor, a geologist for Doe Run and president of the area Chamber of Commerce in Viburnum, a town built by the company when it began mining here in the 1950s.