Abandoned Mines Pose Widespread Threat

Mine rescue team leader Gary Christensen remembers finding the 10-year-old boy in the darkness of the abandoned mine.

For five days in 1989, Joshua Dennis was lost in an old mine in Tooele County after he had wandered away from his Boy Scout troop.

As Christensen and other members of the Energy West Mine Rescue Team searched the labyrinth, he thought he would find the boy’s body, not a living child.

“It’s almost impossible to describe the feeling. When I first saw him, I just grabbed him and held him like he was my own. We didn’t expect to find him alive,” Christensen said.

In Utah and around the nation, thousands of abandoned mines are a threat to any curious explorer who wanders into one.

For decades in Utah and elsewhere, governments have been working to seal the mines. About 5,000 have been closed in Utah but 15,000 remain, according to the Division of Oil, Gas and Mining. Its abandoned mine reclamation program has been operating since 1983.

But even as the state worked to close the mines, five people have died in them since 1983.

Almost every part of the state had operating mines during the industry’s heyday, about 100 to 150 years ago. Coal, silver, copper, gold and other minerals were plentiful.

“They were digging everywhere they could. It helped develop the West, but now we’re left with the legacy of that,” said Mark Mesch, program administrator for the Utah Abandoned Mine Reclamation Program.

Despite the danger, those working to seal the mines often are shocked by what they find in the tunnels: cigarette butts where there is the potential of gas leaks or old dynamite; crumpled beer cans; even the remains of an Easter egg hunt.

And it’s not just explorers who are in danger. As Utah residents take to the wild parts of the state, they are coming into contact with the mines. Last year, Robert Bartholomew, 26, of American Fork died when he drove an ATV into a mine shaft in Utah County.

So it’s up to Utah’s Abandoned Mine Reclamation team to first study old maps to determine where mines are, then to go out in the field and, with a Global Positioning System, map them.

After looking for artifacts and rare species of bats, a construction crew either fills in the mine or seals the entrance.

Mesch’s crew currently is working in Rich County, Moab, Beaver, St. George, the west desert and the Uinta Basin.

Patrick Park, president of the National Association of Abandoned Mine Land Program, measures the problem’s scope in terms of money spent and the amount that still needs to be spent. About $2 billion has been spent; about $6.3 billion in reclamation work remains.

Abandoned mines are common in the West. There are about 30,000 in Colorado, 100,000 in Arizona, 25,000 in New Mexico and 50,000 in Nevada, according to Mesch and records from other states.

It’s a problem faced by Tooele County Sheriff Frank Scharmann. With hundreds of abandoned mines in the county west of Salt Lake City, the search and rescue team has to be ready to rappel down deep mine shafts at a moment’s notice.

“Our search and rescue is training all the time and doing a lot of mine rappelling. But no one’s ever prepared to go down 600 or 800 feet,” Scharmann said.

And for Christensen, who volunteers to find the hapless and unlucky, the mines can’t be closed fast enough.

“I think there probably could be a bigger effort made. The problem is the funding,” Christensen said. “It’s a slow process; it’s not something that’s at the top of anyone’s agenda.”