SILVERTON – Colorado’s Natural Resources Trustees have secured over $7 million in settlement funds to address the injuries to natural resources inflicted by decades of mining around Silverton.
The question now: How will the money be spent?
Three natural resources trustees are responsible for distributing the funds. Attorney General Phil Weiser; Executive Director of the Department of Natural Resources Dan Gibbs; and Trisha Oeth, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s director of environmental health and protection (the designee of the agency’s executive director), met with stakeholders Thursday to discuss that question.
About 40 people attended an informal meeting with Weiser, Gibbs and Oeth in Silverton Thursday morning, followed by the trustees’ formal quarterly meeting in Durango that afternoon.
The $7.3 million is available for projects stretching from Silverton down the Animas River drainage to the state line.
Weiser’s office released a solicitation for project applications March 18. Trustees have made $3.5 million available in the first round of funding; the other half of the funds are being reserved for use after the EPA wraps up the Superfund cleanup.
The money can be used to restore, replace or acquire the equivalent of injured resources, or to compensate the public for the loss of those resources, said Jason King, an attorney in Weiser’s office who works on the Bonita Peak Mining District.
The federal Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act directs two types of activities: remediation and restoration.
Planning for cleanup work, or remediation, in and around Silverton began in 2016, a year after contractors with the Environmental Protection Agency breached a plug at the Gold King Mine and sent 3 million gallons of heavy-metal laden water into Cement Creek and the Animas River.
In 2022, the federal government and the Sunnyside Gold Corp., which installed bulkheads in a nearby mine causing water to back up into the Gold King, each settled claims with an agreement to contribute roughly $45 million to the cleanup in the Bonita Peak Mining District Superfund site established around Silverton.
Conversations around the restoration of or compensation for injured natural resources – the other category of activities prescribed by CERCLA – are now underway.
In May 2023, Weiser announced his office had secured a $5 million settlement with the U.S. federal government to address the injury to the natural environment. The settlement was the fourth natural resource settlement the Attorney General’s had reached. Between 2009 and 2021, settlements with three mining companies secured an additional $2.3 million.
“This is not Superfund, this is not cleanup, it’s restoration of natural resources” King said. “It is not punitive, it is compensatory.”
Although remediation and restoration are two separate wings of CERCLA, the protracted nature of Superfund work is a stumbling block for leaders in Silverton and Durango who for years have been champing at the bit to begin restoration projects.
And with uncertainty around what specific remediation projects the EPA will pursue, stakeholders are looking primarily at projects outside the Superfund site, at least for now.
“While the EPA is doing its work, it’s premature to do the restoration work,” Weiser said in an interview with The Durango Herald. “The remediation work needs to be completed before you start restoration work.”
Elected officials from San Juan County and the town of Silverton both tossed around broad ideas for potential projects. One priority for the community, cleaning up the Howardsville site, will have to wait until after the EPA is done with the remediation work.
“We have done some of the groundwork,” said newly elected Silverton Mayor Dayna Kranker in the meeting. “This community has thought about this for a long time.”
River corridor restoration, fish passages and conservation easements are all possibilities that could receive funding. Silverton’s Animas River Corridor Revitalization Plan could also be ripe for funding.
The uncertainty around where to fund projects has the potential to dredge up old resentments long-held by leaders in the headwaters community of Silverton. Weiser caught flak during his visit in 2023, when San Juan County and Silverton officials questioned why the meeting was taking place in Durango rather than Silverton.
Now, Weiser says he is looking for officials in La Plata and San Juan counties to work together.
The only line his office will draw will but temporal, but not geographical – no more than half the money will be allocated to project proposals received by the end of September, while the remaining half will be saved until EPA completes the Superfund remediation work.
“The county commissioners here and in La Plata are 100% locked arms in this together,” Weiser said following the meeting in Silverton. ”… The proposals are not going to be ‘us versus them,’ but ‘what's best for all of us,’ and that's how we want it.”
rschafir@durangoherald.com
