English

Abstract

For the past fourteen years, the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Mine Waste Technology Program (MWTP) has been implemented by MSE Technology Application's Butte, Montana office with administrative assistance from the Department of Energy's Western Environmental Technology Office and technical direction from EPA's National Risk Management Research Laboratory (EPA-NRMRL). The MWTP is the only effort with long-term, steady funding focused on how to effectively deal with mine wastes associated with active and abandoned hardrock mines. A report by Resources for the Future (Probst and Konisky, 2001) indicated that hardrock mining mega sites (sites with estimated cleanup costs greater than $50 million) cost about twice as much to clean up when compared to other types of sites on the National Priority List (NPL) under EPA's Superfund program. In an effort to cut cleanup costs, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) recommended that EPA perform a review and analysis of: E Innovative, alternative, or promising new remediation technologies (engineered or non-engineered) that identify enhanced efficiency and effectiveness in addressing remediation of hardrock mining sites and associated waste. (EPA-OIG, 2004) The MWTP has been fulfilling this mission over its history. A recent review of the technologies demonstrated under the MWTP to date has been performed to assist with addressing issues at abandoned mine sites, some of which are Superfund mega sites. Thomas P. Dunne, EPA's acting assistant administrator for solid waste and emergency response also acknowledged the of mine waste issues in a New York Times article in October 2005: E Mining problems weren't considered a very high priority in past decades, but they are a concern now. (Perlez and Johnson, 2005) The attention that EPA is giving this issue should justify additional budgetary support to address it. The cost of the cleanup of inactive and abandoned mines is estimated to be between $2 and $37 billion (EPA-OIG, 2004).