In 2020, the Environmental Protection Agency declared an emergency action in Telluride, Colorado, and proceeded to excavate some 15 acres of mine tailings just outside of town.
That action is now over, but the town continues to grapple with the remnants of its mining past.
Megan Eno, the US Forest Service Ranger with the Norwood District, is walking on the Valley Floor, south of the Sunoco gas station near the bridge at Boomerang Road.
“Where we’re standing right now, if we were to rewind time to 2019, there was a trail that paralleled this very spot that was straight up mine tailings,” Eno recalls.
The area was a known problem for the Forest Service.
Lead levels in soil at the site were thousands of times above what federal agencies deem acceptable.
Meanwhile, despite posted warning signs, the site was a popular destination for bikers and other recreators.
Concerned about the level of public exposure to the tailings, Eno contacted the Environmental Protection Agency to do a site visit back in 2019.
“Just being on-site with the EPA and the Forest Service, we quickly realized that the risk was real. We weren’t able to keep people from recreating on those mine tailings. And that’s what spurred the immediate action. It also helped that we saw children that day. So that’s very inspiring right? It was like ‘it’s better to do this right now than to wait,’” said Eno.
Work on the tailings began almost immediately following the visit, and the project unfolded and expanded over the following summers.
“So when the EPA mobilized in 2021, they had an initial estimate that they were going to remove something to the tune of 15,000 cubic yards of contaminated material,” she said.
“But, like with anything, that was a surface observation, and as they dug they continued to find more. So while we thought this was going be a one season removal action it ended up being two — 2021 and 2022 — and they ultimately ended up removing 30,000 cubic yards.”
Contaminated soils were scraped off a 15-acre portion of the Valley Floor, beginning at the Boomerang Bridge and stretching west along the course of the San Miguel.
Over two summers, the EPA then trucked the tailings across town and deposited them under management by the Newmont Mining Company, east of Telluride.
Joni Sandoval, a federal on-scene coordinator with the EPA, says all project goals were completed.
“We successfully removed all of the tailings material from the Valley Floor. So the threat to human health and environment was mitigated and we consider that a big success, right? We kept the trails open for recreation, there were no safety issues for the workers or for the public, we monitored for air quality and found no elevated levels. I definitely took pride in the work that we did there,” said Sandoval.
Last fall, the EPA put down some seed material and returned management of the site back to the Forest Service.
USFS is now partnering with Trout Unlimited, a national conservation group, to turn the focus of the project from remediation to revegetation.
Tanner Banks is working on habitat restoration with Trout Unlimited.
Looking around at the vast swath of gravel and dirt, he recognizes the EPA’s first round of seeding last fall has not led to immediate results.
“Obviously we have not had great success in recruitment. I’ve seen worse. But in this type of a setting, in this riparian corridor, vegetation is obviously going to help drive how the ecosystem functions long-term, so that is one of the goals,” said Banks.
Banks and Eno estimate a full revegetation effort could take some three to five years, and will be a collaborative process, dependent on grant funding and open to community input.
For members of the public concerned with the bald patch that remediation efforts left on Telluride’s beloved Valley Floor, Sandoval urges patience.
“It takes years for root systems to get established and really take off. It’s not uncommon to see things have a slow start to revegetation, but it will come back,” Sandoval promises.
As the area deals with its mining past, each remediation project tends to progress slightly differently.
In the summer of 2020, the Town of Telluride completed its own project on the Valley Floor, which opted to cap tailings and reroute the river rather than move contaminated materials to a new location.
The habitat at that site is already returning in full.
The EPA is now shifting its focus to tailings downstream, along the Galloping Goose Trail in Lawson Hill.
Residents who have watched the Emergency Action at Boomerang with concern say they hope for a different process this time around.
Nancy Craft, a resident of Lawson, met me at the tailings site below the Galloping Goose.
“You know, there are examples right in the area — just upstream on the Valley Floor — where the Town of Telluride had an extremely successful tailings remediation and revegetation,” said Craft.
“I hope, instead of declaring an emergency action here, the EPA will take all the time it needs, with lots of public input, and come up with a project that will really achieve the goals.”
For some, such as Craft, who have watched the EPA’s work at Boomerang with concern, the transfer of management back to the Forest Service marks the end of a chapter, and the beginning of a long road towards restoration.
Up and down the banks of the San Miguel, efforts to reckon with an industrial past are certain to continue.
This storywas shared with us via Rocky Mountain Community Radio, a network of public media stations, including KDNK, in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico.