Panel Weighs Cleaning Up After Success Some Question Why Mine Owners Aren’T Helping With Cost Of Project To Keep Metals Out Of River

A million-dollar fix for the Success Mine would stop tons of heavy metals from flowing into the South Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River every year.

But some question why the proposal to clean up the old mine high in the Silver Valley leaves taxpayers footing the bill.

Officials know that Harry Magnuson and Bill Zanetti own interests in the mine, they say. And they wonder why the two prominent valley businessmen aren’t paying to clean it up.

“We believe the owners need to step forward and take some responsibility here,” said Matt Fein of Hecla Mining Co. “They need to support this project.”

Fein’s comments came during Tuesday’s meeting of the Coeur d’Alene River Basin Commission, a state group advising the Environmental Protection Agency on basin cleanup.

Michele Nanni of The Lands Council in Spokane lambasted the idea of using public money to bail out the mine.

“Harry Magnuson’s hurting a little bit,” Nanni said sarcastically, before she was shushed by commission Chairman Dick Panabaker. “He made a lot of money in the basin and now he’s sitting on it.”

Magnuson’s office said that Success is a public company with roughly 1,000 shareholders. Magnuson was out of town on Tuesday. A reporter was directed to Zanetti, company president.

Zanetti was not available for comment Tuesday.

Every day, the Success Mine dumps more than 100 pounds of dissolved heavy metals into the nearby East Fork of Nine Mile Creek, state officials say.

The Silver Valley Natural Resource Trustees want to install a state-of-the-art ground water treatment system for more than $850,000.

The commission on Tuesday voted to support the concept of the project.

The trustees do cleanup work in the basin with $4.5 million Idaho accepted in 1986 from mining companies as settlement for environmental damage.

This project represents the last of that money, “the last hurrah,” as Chairman Chuck Moss put it.

The commission will get the final say on funding for the project this spring. Work on the system could start by fall.

Perched above Wallace, the Success Mine opened at the turn of the century and closed in the 1950s. It remains the worst metals polluter in the Nine Mile Creek drainage of the South Fork.

Every day, ground water seeping through a tailings pile dumps roughly 90 pounds of zinc, 10 pounds of lead and less than a pound of cadmium into Nine Mile Creek, according to Geoff Harvey, with the Idaho Division of Environmental Quality.

Officials have been trying to control pollution there for years. The Environmental Protection Agency installed an emergency berm in 1993 at Success to make sure the pile of tailings didn’t collapse into the creek.

“It’s a very important site,” Harvey said.

There’s no guarantee the treatment will work, he acknowledged. This is the first time such a treatment system has been applied to basin mines.

Initial proposals involve a 12-foot-deep buried wall that’s anywhere from 600 to 1,200 feet long, anchored into bedrock along the creek.

The barrier would funnel ground water into a treatment area filled with crushed fish bones. Phosphorus in the fish bones - called apatite - pull the metals from the water.

Cleansed water is funneled back to the creek.

If the system is installed, it will require annual operations and maintenance costing $30,000 per year, according to Doug Morell of consultant Golder Associates.

Morell said he couldn’t predict how many years those expenses would continue.

EPA officials said they plan to pursue the mine owners for cleanup costs. “We are concerned, along with the state and others, that they carry their fair share,” EPA’s Earl Liverman said.

All of the potential sources for cleanup work at the Success Mine at this point are public:

$289,000, part of a $500,000 appropriation requested from the Idaho Legislature; not available until July 1.

$350,000 in federal Clean Water Act funds, matched by $215,000 from the Silver Valley trustees group.

Although it’s not currently being considered, the trustees also could access $750,000 secured for basin cleanup by Idaho’s congressional delegation, to be administered by the Bureau of Land Management.