Mine Will Pay Record Settlement for Polluting

The company blamed for Colorado’s worst environmental disaster has agreed to a $27.5-million settlement, the latest chapter in the long-running legal battle launched by former state Atty. Gen. Gale A. Norton, designated last week to head the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Environmentalists have long criticized what they say was Norton’s reluctance in the early 1990s to take action at the Summitville mine, which flooded cyanide and other heavy metals into the Alamosa River. The poisoning effectively killed all living things along 17 miles of the river.

The recent agreement to clean up the Summitville Superfund site was brokered by the U.S. Department of Justice and Colorado Atty. Gen. Ken Salazar, who Tuesday filed a new lawsuit against five other firms involved with mining operations at Summitville.

The settlement ends the 1996 lawsuit filed by Norton against the mine’s owner, who declared bankruptcy and abandoned the site in 1992. The $27.5-million fine is the largest penalty ever paid by an individual in Colorado history.

“Instead of waiting for years and spending tens of millions of dollars while this case was making its way through the courts, the people most affected by the Summitville mine will see very positive direct benefits,” Salazar said when he announced the settlement Dec. 22. “A substantial burden has also been lifted from the shoulders of Colorado’s taxpayers.”

Norton Criticized for Slow Action

Norton, an attorney in private practice in Denver, was nominated last week by President-elect George W. Bush to serve as Secretary of the Interior. She served two terms as Colorado’s top law enforcement officer, from 1991 to 1999, and handled the state’s action against Robert Friedland, who operated the mine from Canada.

Norton has declined to comment while awaiting confirmation to Bush’s Cabinet.

The state’s handling of Summitville has come under new scrutiny since Norton’s nomination to head the federal department responsible for, among other things, overseeing mining on public lands.

Summitville has been a morass of legal wrangling since at least 1987, when toxins were discovered to be flowing into the Alamosa River, which supplies irrigation water to farmers in the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado.

State officials called the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for help with the cleanup after the mine was abandoned in 1992.

“Everybody knew Summitville was a problem,” said Roger Flynn, director of the Western Mining Action Project, a nonprofit environmental law firm based in Boulder, Colo. “Yet Norton allowed the company to continue operating despite massive environmental concerns.

“If the EPA had not raced up there and cleaned it up, it may not have got done. It was the EPA that saved Colorado’s proverbial backside, not Norton. Gale Norton does not aggressively go after polluters, especially in the private sector.”

Martha Rudolph, a former assistant attorney general who worked for Norton, said that the issues involved were complicated and that Norton had hoped to handle the dispute without going to court.

“There were negotiations between the state and the various entities trying to resolve this amicably,” Rudolph said. “Things just fell apart.”

The EPA used emergency funds to immediately shore up a man-made cyanide-laced pond, which held 170 million gallons of water and had been used to leach gold from the ore extracted in the open pit mine.

At least $11 million from the settlement will be used to pay for the state’s contribution to the cleanup. The EPA has already put nearly $150 million into repairing the site, which is in the San Juan Mountains near the Continental Divide.

Contamination Wiped Out Wildlife

The 1,400-acre mine site and its cleanup has been a divisive issue in the state for more than a decade. The metals that flowed into the Alamosa River killed fish, frogs and some plant life and fouled the source of irrigation water to the lush San Luis valley and its crops of alfalfa, wheat and potatoes.

The mine received an operation permit before Norton’s first term as attorney general, but the mess she inherited dogged her. The Sierra Club, along with mining and environmental groups, criticized Norton for taking four years after the mine closed to file the lawsuit against Friedland.

“Colorado took a hands-off approach to Summitville,” Flynn said. “Norton gave industry the benefit of the doubt. She has a laissez-faire attitude toward business. Unfortunately, in Interior, she’ll be in charge of mining in the West.”