The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has recently released a project to prevent the migration of contaminated mine tailings from the abandonned Red Devil Mine into the Red Devil Creek. The document describing the proposed course of action can be accessed by the public for review and comments.
Red Devil Mine is located in Alaska,on the south bank of the Kuskokwim river, 8 miles downstream from Sleetmute. Mining activity started at the site in 1933 and lasted a little less than four decades, until 1971. The extraction of cinnabar included underground and surface mining, which produced approximately 35,000, 2.5-quart flasks of mercury. Mine tailings as well as processing waste were disposed at the site, since the mine was operating under the 1872 mining laws. In the mid 1980s, the site was declared "Abandoned and Void" and the facility was abandonned.
Efforts for the environmental restoration of the site, undertaken by BLM in the late 1980s, included removal of the processing chemicals, PCBs in transformers, as well as the backfilling of the open mine shafts and adits. The mine buildings and mercury production facilities were demolished and buried in landfills on the spot in 2002, whereas a serious fuel spill from the mine's storage tanks engaged further BLM action from 2003 through 2006. The fuel spill clean up was completed in 2009-2010 after the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provided the required funding.
At that time, a Remedial Investigation and Feasibility Study (RI/FS) was performed with the cooperation of BLM, as the leading agency, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. The scope of the study was to investigate the nature of the waste material and evaluate the potential risk to humans and the environment after its interaction with the natural soil and water. The outcome of the RI/FS indicated that considerble quantities of tailings containing mercury, arsenic and antimony were eroding into Red Devil Creek, ultimately heading towards the Kuskokwim river.
To face this environmental threat, BLM released a proposal for the prevention of the hazardous waste material migration into the river, a few days ago. The Engineering Evaluation/Cost Analysis describes different solutions for dealing with the problem and is open to the public for review and comments until March 21st. Access to the proposal as well as additional information can be found here.
Sources: deltadiscovery, BLM
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