Neighbors of railroad bed warned
PORTLAND – Residents along the bed of an abandoned logging railroad that was built of waste from a Southern Oregon mercury mine should avoid arsenic-bearing dust from the material, according to a state report released Tuesday.
State officials said the health advisory will spur work to cover the railroad bed, a remnant of Oregon’s extensive metals mining history that has left hundreds of abandoned mines posing the risk of arsenic and mercury contamination.
People who live along the 17-mile stretch known as the Red Rock Road at Sutherlin use parts of the old rail line as driveways and as a recreational path, state officials said.
The Department of Human Services report released Tuesday said tailings from the former Bonanza Mine at Nonpareil, six miles east of Sutherlin, once the nation’s second-largest producer of mercury, were also used in the construction of two area reservoirs. State officials said it’s not clear how extensively the mining wastes might have been used for other projects.
The railroad line was built in the early 1900s, purchased by Weyerhaeuser Inc. in the 1940s and shut down in 1966, the state report said. After that, it said, the lumber company sold much of the land.
Kathryn Toepel, a state toxicologist, said the warnings of elevated health risks were based on assumptions of lengthy, chronic exposure to arsenic, which can cause cancer and other disorders.
She said the bed should be “cleaned up or capped.”
In the meantime, she said, residents should avoid parts of the road where the tailings are exposed. The bed is covered with gravel in some stretches, overgrown in others and paved in a portion within the city limits. About 1,600 people live within a mile of the railbed, and the nearest house is 60 feet away, the state’s report said.
Toepel said the state has no reports of ill health blamed on the road, and it would be hard to make a connection between the railroad bed and someone’s poor health, especially in a region where levels of naturally occurring arsenic are high and residents are urged to get their wells tested.
Greg Aitken, project manager for the state Department of Environmental Quality, said the levels of arsenic are unacceptable but don’t constitute an imminent health threat.
He said the new health assessment caused his department to put a higher priority on Red Rock Road, and it will meet with Weyerhaeuser officials later this month.