Cleanup begun at Siskiyou mine

MEDFORD, Ore. – When Matt Dwyer brings up the weather, it isn’t to make small talk with his co-workers at the Blue Ledge Mine site high in the Siskiyou Mountains.

He knows it could snow any day, and the crew is racing to complete a massive toxic waste cleanup on Copper Butte, which rises to about 5,000 feet above sea level.

“It’s critical we button it up before winter,” said Dwyer, project manager for Engineering/Remediation Resources Group Inc. of Martinez, Calif. The firm is the lead contractor to clean up the toxic waste left by the historic copper mining operation.

“We need to stabilize everything so the winter rains and snow don’t cause any material to go into the creek,” he said. “We should be buttoned up by the end of the month; that’s our target.”

Since the cleanup operation began early in July, much of the rocky peak has been stripped of old mining tailings containing concentrations of heavy metals. About 40,000 cubic yards have been removed from the mountainside and placed in a nearby three-acre sealed repository.

“We will put a temporary cover on the repository this year,” said Pete Jones, the geologist in charge of cleaning up abandoned mines for the U.S. Forest Service throughout Oregon and in far Northern California.

“We will come back next spring after the snow melts, pull everything off and add any residual materials we weren’t able to add this year,” he said.

There are perhaps another 10,000 cubic yards left to be put in the repository, which can hold up to 60,000 cubic yards, he estimated.

The goal is to remove the hazardous materials from the mine area to prevent them from leaching into the watershed. The $13.6 million project is being paid for through federal stimulus funds.

The mining tailings at the Blue Ledge site are laced with a heavy-metal mix of arsenic, cadmium, copper, lead, sulfuric acid and zinc.

The chemical ooze over the years violates the federal Clean Water Act. Seepage from the mine goes into Joe Creek, which flows into Elliot Creek. That stream flows into the Applegate River and into the reservoir behind Applegate Dam.

Because the nearly 700-acre mine is patented, making it private property even though it is surrounded by the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, the Forest Service is working with the Environmental Protection Agency.

The EPA has jurisdiction on private land when it comes to environmental pollution. The Forest Service’s concern is the environmental effect on the adjacent public forestland and the watershed. After the Salem resident who owned the land died several years ago, it was passed on to relatives who gave their blessing to the federal cleanup. The family was not involved in the mining operation.

The mine, which was most active during World War I and has been dormant for decades, is several miles south of Applegate Dam and about 33 miles south of Jacksonville in Northern California. Prospectors discovered the copper deposit in 1898 and built several small communities in the area during the mine’s heyday.

The Blue Ledge name came from the blue sheen of weathered chalcopyrite, also called copper pyrite, found throughout the outcropping.