Oregon Public Broadcasting

Decades-old -- even century-old -- gold, silver and zinc mines have left a toxic legacy that's still felt today in the West.  Caustic, polluted water drains into streams. 

Abandoned mines are also draining the wallets of U.S. taxpayers.  This summer, the Environmental Protection Agency celebrates a few creative solutions to get new owners to clean up and redevelop old mine sites. 

Correspondent Tom Banse reports from central Idaho.

The American West is dotted with hundreds of abandoned mines, like the Clayton Silver Mine where I've come now.

Stopping environmental contamination from the historic Clayton Silver Mine cost U.S. taxpayers about $2 million.

We're about a mile up a side canyon from the Salmon River in central Idaho. The mine entrance and the ore mill next door present a classic tableau -- weathered, falling apart, rusty.

What you can't tell quite as easily is how much lead and arsenic is laced into the giant pile of mill spoils and waste rock just a little bit down the canyon.

That has cost you, me, and the rest of America's taxpayers $2 million just to stabilize so that dust storms or rain don't wash it or blow it downstream.

The mine owners went bust a long time ago, which is sadly the classic story.  Every now and then though there are exceptions, which make for an interesting story.

Dick Vorpahl: "A hundred years ago there was a tramway that came overhead and delivered the ore to this place..."

Dick Vorpahl supervises a different mine clean up that's also costing millions, but in this case, not a dime comes from your pocket or mine.  We're now a stone's throw from the resort town of Sun Valley.  Earthmovers haul away soil and rock contaminated with heavy metals.

Dick Vorpahl: "We suspect the dispersal of contaminants was coming from the tramway by and large."

Vorpahl's Chicago-based company bought this forlorn complex of three played-out mines last year. 

Earthmovers scrape up mine waste rock as part of a privately-financed environmental cleanup near Sun Valley, Idaho.

Denovo Independence LLC expects the economy to rebound by the time the property is all cleaned up.  Then it could turn a tidy profit by selling luxury home sites.

Dick Vorpahl: "Obviously, the acquisition and clean up costs of the properties must come from somewhere. It's going to be private capital that'll fund development (clean up) of the properties. In return, we are looking to develop some of the most spectacular views in the Sun Valley area."

A sweet deal if it works.  But to be realistic, most abandoned mines do not occupy prime real estate next to famous resorts.  Let's go two hours north to sparsely populated Custer County, Idaho for another case study.

A park ranger describes the history of the newly-opened Bayhorse ghost town.

Sound (park tour): "As we continue down the way, you'll see some ore handling facilities down here..."

A park ranger describes the history of the newly-opened Bayhorse ghost town.  The Idaho Parks and Recreation Department saved this crumbling, yet evocative mining village by buying the whole mining district.

The sellers gave a discount, but also transferred liability for clean up says project coordinator Rick Cummins.

Bayhorse mining district is the newest unit of Idaho State Parks.

Rick Cummins: "In reality in the long term if they walk away from it, can't sell, that mining company is defunct and gone already, then either the state or the county will end up with it anyway.  The hazards are all still there.  This is trying to take the hazard and convert it to something that's useful."

Brooks Stanfield: "I don't know these sites are exceptions. I think they represent more the leading edge of a new way to address contaminated sites."

That's U.S. EPA clean-up project manager Brooks Stanfield.  The federal government kicked in about half the money needed to make the Bayhorse townsite safe.  Stanfield says for the first time in the Northwest, the EPA made a grant from its "brownfields" fund to clean up a mine.

Brooks Stanfield: "The Department of Parks (and Recreation) has taken that idea that came from the industrial Rust Belt if you will and applied it here in one of the most remote parts of our region."

Stanfield says there's another reason he expects to see more abandoned mines reclaimed.  Congress rewrote the liability rules to allow new owners who complete clean ups in good faith to be shielded from future lawsuits.

Online:

Independence/Triumph/Northstar mine redevelopment (Sun Valley area)

EPA: Clayton Silver Mine cleanup (Clayton, ID)

Idaho State Parks: Bayhorse mining ghost town reclamation