EAGLE COUNTY, Colorado — Far below Highway 24 in a deep canyon south of Minturn you’ll find the rickety ruins of Belden, a long abandoned work camp for the river-polluting, trout-killing Eagle Mine.

It looks like a movie set down there. Railroad tracks wind through the narrow valley alongside the Eagle River. Rows of rusted buildings are still there, surrounded and filled by junk and debris, looking as if they’ll collapse at any second. Rock walls tower above you, and the ghost-town Gilman is perched 1,000 feet above on the cliff side. Seems like a perfect place for a shoot-out with bandits.

Look up the slopes and you’ll see some more antiquities — wooden “cribs” built by miners decades ago to hold tons of useless rock they pulled out of the mine. And now, 24 years after the Eagle Mine shut down, river advocates are worried that all the rock still trapped on the cliff poses an environmental threat to the Eagle River below.

If someday those deteriorating cribs fall apart, all that rock, which is contaminated with toxic metal like zinc, would end up falling into the river. It could have a catastrophic effect on the ecosystem and kill wildlife that’s sensitive to zinc, like trout.

The Environmental Protection Agency though is finalizing a plan to prevent that from happening. As early as this month, it could begin building a couple concrete walls in the canyon to catch any contaminated rock that might fall in the future.

Past pollution

More than 100 years of gold, silver and zinc mining has certainly taken its toll on the environment. Toxic metals from the Eagle Mine have been spilling into the Eagle River for years, killing fish, tainting drinking water and staining the river orange for a time.

In the past 20 years though, the river has made a remarkable recovery. Areas effected by the mine were declared a “Superfund” cleanup site by the Environmental Protection Agency in the mid 80s, and cleanup by media conglomerate Viacom began in 1988.

Areas where mine waste was stored were cleaned up and revegetated.

Contaminated water found inside the Eagle Mine and surface water around Gilman started being pumped to a water treatment facility for cleaning.

The cleanup significantly improved water quality, and over time, brown trout — which are pretty tolerant of zinc — started appearing in the river again, even in the most polluted areas. Even though other species of trout — like rainbow and cutthroat — and the most sensitive fish, sculpin, still haven’t returned to the river, a lot of progress has been made.

Today, there could be around 118 pounds of zinc a day in the river, while years ago it was closer to 1,100. That’s why making sure the waste rock in Belden doesn’t fall in the river is so important, says Arlene Quenon, president of the Eagle River Watershed Council.

“That could be a major source of pollution if several thousand pounds of rock and cribbings fall in the river,” Quenon said. “We would be supportive of anything that would prevent that from happening.”

Building carefully

Originally, the Environmental Protection Agency wanted to remove the rock from Belden altogether, or at least consolidate it into a place where it couldn’t fall into the river.



Actually doing this would be an engineering nightmare, the agency discovered, said Jennifer Chergo, public affairs specialist for the Environmental Protection Agency.

“We’d have to get the backhoes up there, use explosives to bet the rock down, it just became very risky,” Chergo said. “There’s always that concern, you don’t want to make it worse.”

There will be two walls, one higher up the cliff, one closer to the canyon floor. Final design on the walls hasn’t been completed, so the EPA doesn’t know how long or tall they’ll be yet.

The EPA isn’t so worried about pollution from rainwater and snowmelt running off those rocks, which is a problem in other areas of the Eagle Mine.

These rocks, since they were never processed, likely have very low amounts of zinc, and would only be a huge environmental problem if they fall in the water, where they would become a constant, direct source of pollution, Chergo said.

Web site

Learn more about water quality issues at the ERWC Eagle Mine Limited’s new Web site at http://www.erwceaglemine.org/.

Eagle Mine Ltd. was formed by the Eagle River Watershed council to accept a grant from the EPA to involve and educate the community regarding water quality issues with the Eagle Mine Superfund Site.



Staff Writer Matt Terrell can be reached at 970-748-2955 or mterrell@vaildaily.com.