Plume will be pumped

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Apr 29, 2004 | by Geoffrey Fattah Deseret Morning News

The board for the Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District came to a historic decision Thursday on how to best clean up two contaminated groundwater plumes caused by Kennecott Copper's mining operations.

After years of study, debate and discussion -- and calling it "the best we can do" -- board members voted on an option that would pump groundwater contaminated with sulfates and selenium from two plumes into a reverse osmosis filtration facility.

District assistant general manager Richard Bay said the procedure would capture roughly 80 percent of the water as drinking water, which would be supplied to cities near the area. A remaining 20 percent of the water would contain concentrated contaminated water. The issue of what to do with the by-product has been brewing for several years.

Local leaders and environmental activists, including the Sierra Club, Salt Lake County Audubon Society and Salt Lake County Mayor Nancy Workman, publicly scolded the water district after the board decided to dump the waste water into the Jordan River.

The event prompted the district to work with the state Department of Environmental Quality to form a stakeholder group, comprised of city, environmental, federal and state officials, to come together to find an acceptable solution.

Bay said many options were studied in three meetings over the past month. The options included deep well injecting the waste water, pumping the by-product out to the Great Salt Lake, transferring it to Kennecott's tailings pond in Magna, setting up an evaporation or distillation facility, or simply taking no action at all.

The group deemed taking no action unacceptable. Bay pointed out that by doing nothing, the plume would spread to wells in nearby cities. Estimates are that it would take 3,000 years to clear up on its own. An evaporation facility was ruled out because it would require 1,000 acres of land, and deep well injection brought in permit and legal issues.

In the end, the stakeholders group settled on pumping the concentrated water out to Kennecott's tailings pond in Magna. Although the plume closest to the mine property has access to an existing pipeline, the eastern plume will require the construction of a 10-inch, 20-mile pipe out to the tailings facility.

District officials say the cost for the line would be $8 million, two-thirds of which would be paid for by Kennecott's special trust fund, while a third would have to be paid for. In fact, Bay said, the water district has agreed to help pay $1.5 million for the clean up project, while Kennecott pays out $21 million.

Paula Doughty, director of environmental affairs for Kennecott, pointed out that since her company signed a consent decree with the state and federal government in 1995, Kennecott has shelled out an additional $60 million to help solve this problem.

Representatives of environmental groups, who were part of the stakeholders meeting, were less than enthusiastic about the solution.

A representative with the Great Salt Lake Alliance commended the stakeholders' efforts in trying to find a solution, but said the issue of selenium was the most important. Some scientific studies have shown that exposure to selenium among waterfowl can cause reproductive problems. In humans, it has a laxative effect.

Mark Clemens with the Utah Chapter of the Sierra Club, who also was a stakeholder, suggested that all this effort was simply an attempt to avoid having the area declared a federal superfund site. "The Sierra Club is opposed to the discharge of selenium into the Great Salt Lake," Clemens said.

Diane Nielson, executive director for the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, and also trustee to the Southwest Groundwater Treatment Project, called the proposal a "reasonable recommendation," saying the action will help to remove contamination while preventing the spread of the plumes, buying time to further study how to deal with the issue.

Bay said it will take about three years to set up the plan and anticipated that drinking water will be supplied to cities as early as 2007.

E-mail: gfattah@desnews.com