Mines once generated the wealth for many Colorado towns — for their people, their companies, and even their state as a whole. But this wealth came with an environmental price.

There are about half a million abandoned mines across the country, according to the Bureau of Land Management, and most are in the Western United States. More than 23,000 of them are in Colorado alone. Twelve of them have been listed as requiring immediate attention by the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund program.
The towns of Silverton, Creede and Aspen all started off as mining towns but now inherited a Superfund site.

Although Silverton made headlines in 2015 when its nearby river turned orange, putting the spotlight on the perpetual discharge of heavy metals coming from its mining sites and leading to the creation of a large Superfund site of 48 mines, Creede is planning to plug its leaking tunnel while hoping for mining to come back. As for Aspen, it is one of the very few sites in Colorado that has been “delisted” from the EPA’s National Priority List after a 10-year-long battle led by the local residents. Silverton, meanwhile, is struggling with the size of its Superfund site while looking for innovative techniques to make cleanups more effective.

Read the story here: https://ucbsoj.github.io/abandoned-mine/