Cleaning up Eureka One Property at a Time

 

Eureka, Juab County – Inch by inch, truckload by truckload, Eureka is shedding its skin of the contaminated mining past.

Patches of grass are now beginning to sprout from recently cleaned lawns. In other parts of the neighborhoods, rocks replace grass that once covered the contaminated ground in this historic town of around 800 people living 45 miles southwest of Provo.

And, in the midst of a massive $80 million Superfund cleanup is new housing construction, where people are buying contaminated land to build their dream homes. It has come at a time when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its labor force of five crews are working a 10-hour six-day a week schedule to complete the cleanup as efficiently and economically as possible.

EPA is working in partnership with the Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Environmental Response and Remediation (DERR) to complete the cleanup by 2009 – seven years after Eureka was designated a Superfund site.

“We have faced some challenges,” said Paula Schmittdiel, remedial project manager for EPA’s Region 8 Office in Denver. “But we are feeling like we are making good progress.”

Cleanup crews have had to contend with steep slopes, broken water lines, rerouting roads to minimize truck traffic along city streets, and wariness among some local residents.

“We had people in the community recognize the need for the cleanup early on. We also had people who didn’t want us here but figured if we were going to do the cleanup, they wanted it to be done quickly,” said David Bird, project manager for DERR. “We did start out slow, but I think we are hitting our stride. I think it’s making progress.”

So far, over 200 of the estimated 700 residential properties are cleaned. The crews hired by Shaw Environmental Inc., under a government contract with USACE, which is conducting the cleanup under an interagency agreement with EPA, remove the top 18-inches of contaminated soil from each of the residential properties and replace it with topsoil or gravel. Steep slopes are armored with riprap. This type of project requires large quantities of water for re-vegetation and dust control. EPA obtains water for this effort by purchasing it from Eureka city and from an agreement with a Potentially Responsible Party “PRP” who has land holdings and water rights near Eureka. In two years, 130,479 cubic yards of contaminated soils have been removed. Nearly 100 acres – about 74 percent – of the mine waste piles have been re-graded and capped with rock from a nearby quarry.

In the process, some city streets are repaved due to the traffic from the heavy construction trucks. Broken water lines encountered during excavation are replaced. There’s even community interest in the restoration of the historic Shea Building on Main Street.

Most importantly: Fewer cases of children testing positive for dangerously high levels of lead in their blood.

“We are doing blood lead testing on a quarterly basis,” said Mark Jones of the Utah Department of Health. “There has been a gradual decline in the number of children tested with elevated levels of lead in their blood, from 40 in 2000 to only one in 2006,” he added.

City officials couldn’t be more pleased.

“This is the best thing that could have happened to Eureka,” said City Councilman Joel Bernini.

Eureka’s Mining Past and Promising Future

Eureka, named for the discovery of a high-grade outcropping of silver and lead, was founded in 1870. It became the center of the Tintic Mining District, which produced millions of dollars worth of silver. Then, in the early 1900s, the silver business went sour but continued until the later 1950s. Chief Consolidated Mining Co. hopes to eventually resume mining operations.

In 2001 and 2002, EPA conducted an emergency removal action to remove contaminated soils where lead concentrations were greater than 3,000 parts per million (ppm) or where children with blood lead levels greater than 10 micrograms per deciliter were living. EPA’s cleanup level for lead is 231 ppm. Other metals, including arsenic, also were detected.

Most alarming: Nearly 40 children were found to have high levels of lead in their blood, sometimes more than four times the limit established by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Children are more susceptible to ingesting lead because they play in the dirt. Lead is known to harm the nervous system and can lead to infertility problems, developmental problems among children, and can cause pregnant women to miscarry.

In 2002, EPA officially designated Eureka as a Superfund site, a designation that kicks in federal funds. DEQ stepped in to provide a 10-percent funding match. Along the way, Atlantic Richfield, a “PRP” conducted the clean up of the mine waste piles in the east portion of the site. It also constructed the sedimentation ponds along Knightsville Road as well as the secondary water supply system from the Mammoth well. Union Pacific Railroad, another “PRP” contributed the cleanup work by assuming responsibility for cleaning up the Upper Eureka Gulch and by producing the rock materials need for the remediation from a nearby rock quarry under a large area mine permit obtained by EPA and its contractor. The companies’ contribution have reduced the cost of the cleanup to taxpayers by approximately $12 million.

“I think the community sentiment has turned,” said Bird. “Residents are now seeing how much better the yards look after being cleaned up and also seeing the lead levels in children coming down.”

Property owners Dennis and Marilyn Mason couldn’t agree more.

“This crew really took pride in how to shape our yard to help with the watershed (we were concerned about) and still make a beautiful yard,” wrote the Masons in a thank you note to EPA. “We have had so many positive comments since they were here.”

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