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Annual Report 2005 (con'd)
Annual Report for the Trust for Land
Restoration
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Partnership on the Howard Fork
Targets Mine Tailings Cleanup
The Carbonero Tailings, adjacent to the Howard
Fork, just upstream of East Ophir
Citizens
of the Town of Ophir join USFS & TLR to plan for Cleanup of
Carbonero Tailings
The Watershed
Connection
Volume 17,
Spring 2006
By Pat Willits, with Linda Lanham (USFS)
The Norwood Ranger District and the GMUG Forest Supervisor’s
Office of the US Forest Service received FY06 Forest Service
Abandoned Mine Land funds to award a contract to design/build the
reclamation of a site near Ophir known as the Carbonero
Tailings. The reclamation will be done as a Non-Time-Critical
Removal Action under the US Forest Service's Comprehensive
Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA)
authority. The Carbonero Tailings site is adjacent to the
Howard Fork in the Ophir Valley, just east of the Town.
Most of the tailings at the site are situated on Forest Service land,
but about 1/8th are estimated to sit on a mining claim
known as the Ferric Oxide Placer. The Town of Ophir, as an open
space protection acquisition, purchased the Ferric Oxide in 2005.
Analysis last year by American Geological Consultants, working with
the Trust for Land Restoration, estimated the volume of mill tailings
at the site to be approximately 15,000 cubic yards. The Forest
Service will prepare a set of Engineering Evaluation/Cost Analysis
(EE/CA) reclamation alternatives, and hold an early summer public
meeting in Ophir to discuss. Another public meeting will be
held early fall on-site to review the locations of the planned
tailings removal areas, repository location and wetland
reclamations. Actual removal of the tailings material is
scheduled for the field season of FY07.
The Carbonero Tailings site is one of three mining-related cleanup
priorities for the Howard Fork, as identified in 2001 by a working
group sponsored by the San Miguel Watershed Coalition. The
other two priorities are the Carbonero Mine and the Carribeau
Mine. The Carbonero Mine is on private property, and is
currently being studied by the Trust for Land Restoration as part of
the Howard Fork Acid Rock Drainage (ARD) Study. The Carribeau
Mine is a mixed ownership site. The mine opening is on public
lands administered by the Forest Service, and the adjacent mill site
and associated mill tailings are on private land. The Forest
Service re-directed the mine drainage away from the mill tailings in
2001. Clean-up of the Carribeau Mill Site is discussed elsewhere in
this newsletter.
The Forest Service and the Trust for Land
Restoration are beginning their 5th field season of
investigation and site characterization of abandoned mining sites and
acid rock drainage (ARD) in the Howard Fork valley. Norwood District
Ranger Judy Schutza and Linda Lanham of the Forest Service
Supervisor’s Office in Delta have championed Forest Service
clean-up efforts in the valley. ARD is water contaminated by
heavy metals that emanates from mine openings, from the toe of waste
rock and tailings piles, and, sometimes, from natural occurring
springs and seeps. ARD in the Howard Fork severely impacts
aquatic insect reproduction and aquatic fish species, but is not
thought to be a threat to human health.
American Geological Services Crew taking core
samples to evaluate Carbonero Tailings
Ophir, Colorado
August 2005
American Geological Services Jeff Ludwick
working atop the Carbonero Tailings
Ophir, Colorado
August 2005
_______________________
More...
 Canyon Creek Watershed Brownfields
Assessment Advances
Partnership
on the Howard Fork Targets Mine Tailings Cleanup
Easement Near Telluride Protects Gunnison
Sage Grouse Habitat
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