From CBS Denver (Blair Miller):
The Summitville Mine, located in Rio Grande County, has been under the purview of the EPA and Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment since 1992…
Construction on a hydroelectric power system at the site got underway in 2008, and $17 million in American Reinvestment and Recovery Act funds received in 2009 helped the completion of the water treatment plant at the site.
The $1 million in new Superfund grant money will go toward continuing water treatment at the site.
From The Denver Post (Bruce Finley):
In a statement announcing the grant, Colorado’s Republican U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner called the funding “critical to the continued clean-up at the Summitville Mine,” adding that he is “committed to ensuring Colorado receives the proper support from the federal government to make sure Colorado’s pristine environment is cared for.”
[…]
The EPA took over the site in 1992, when the mine operator went bankrupt and Colorado officials could not handle the disaster. Mine pollution had killed fish in a 17-mile stretch of the Alamosa River and ruined at least a square mile of soil.
There were five small water-treatment plants at the site. A couple were closed. Others were consolidated into a system that could clean 1,000 gallons per minute. That system later was deemed inadequate, leading to construction of a facility that could handle 1,600 gallons a minute of acidic, metals-laced mine drainage.
The Superfund cleanup still is not complete. Colorado officials in a 2014 report to lawmakers estimated the state’s share of water-treatment and other costs over 25 years will be $74 million…
Superfund cleanup work at some mines has stalled due to technical difficulty, lack of political will and scarce funds. For example, no work has been done for years in Colorado at the collapsing Nelson Tunnel above Creede, where millions of gallons of some of the West’s worst unchecked acid mine drainage contaminates headwaters of the Rio Grande River.