From the High Country News (Krista Langlois):
But Superfund — the federal program designed to clean up America’s most toxic sites — usually only proceeds with community support. And in Silverton, that’s lacking. Even after the Aug. 5 spill captured national attention and reinvigorated downstream communities’ insistence that the leaky mines be cleaned up, locals continue to bristle at the suggestion of Superfund. “We’re a tourist area,” Bev Rich, a lifelong Silverton resident, told the Durango Herald in 2013. “You hear the word ‘Superfund’ site and 99 percent think ‘danger.’ So why would you want to go to a Superfund site?”
Those who support Superfund, however — including many residents of the downstream city of Durango — say that there’s simply no other way for the region to move beyond its toxic past. Travis Stills, a Durango lawyer who’s worked on and studied Superfund sites, thinks the problem is too politically entrenched (and expensive) to be handled by state or local authorities alone.
Fearn disagrees. The 71-year-old engineering consultant and former mine owner is one of the strongest voices in Silverton’s anti-Superfund contingent. In 1994, he helped form the Animas River Stakeholders Group to try to prove that acidic drainage from the watershed’s mines could be cleaned up without interference from the federal government. And in recent weeks, he’s explained to the New York Times and other national media why Superfund still isn’t right for Silverton. Among the reasons: a designation would stigmatize the town and turn away tourists. Litigation and bureaucracy could delay the clean-up. Property values could decrease, new mining ventures be deterred, and local input be ignored.
All are valid fears — but not entirely rooted in fact. True, the idea of visiting a Superfund site doesn’t exactly appeal to tourists, but neither does the idea of visiting a Superfund-eligible site. And any stigma seems not to linger after the project is completed: There was a Superfund project in Aspen, Colorado, where million-dollar homes now stand. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a peer reviewed study found that residential property values within three miles of Superfund sites increased 18.6 to 24.5 percent after the sites were cleaned up and deleted from the National Priorities List…
…asking Congress for emergency funds to deal with a long-term problem is unrealistic, and the piecemeal approach the Animas River Stakeholders Group has used isn’t a long-term solution either. While the group has been been moderately successful — it’s relocated mine waste away from streams, bought water rights and diverted ditches, and completed more than a dozen mitigation projects that have helped bring fish back to a once-lifeless stretch of the Animas — it hasn’t solved the problem. After more than 20 years of work, the Gold King Mine alone continues to dribble 200 gallons of tainted water per minute. More than a dozen others have similar discharge.