Pew Campaign for Responsible Mining

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 17, 2007

CONTACT:
Elyssa Rosen
(775) 224-7497

Statement from Jane Danowitz, Director, Pew Campaign For Responsible Mining

On Tomorrow's Superfund Listing For Oregon's Formosa Mine

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Tomorrow, the Environmental Protection Agency will release its latest Superfund National Priorities list, which will include Oregon's Formosa copper and zinc mine. Congress is currently considering H.R. 2262, legislation to reform a 19th-century statute that governs mining on western public lands and sites such as Formosa and leaves responsibility for cleanup with U.S. taxpayers. Metal mines represent a significant Superfund burden. Next week, the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and National Resources will hear testimony about the impact of mining on federal lands.

"This new Superfund listing of yet another metal mine serves as a grim reminder that mining modern mining is still leaving behind the same old messes for taxpayers to clean-up.

"Congress should act now to modernize the 135-year old mining statute, whose lax environmental standards have allowed disasters like this repeatedly to occur.

"With a recent boom in new mining claims, failure to reform the nation's outdated mining law can only result in future Formosa's finding their way onto a Superfund list already bursting at the seams."

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Background:

Near Riddle, Oregon, a now-defunct Canadian company ran the Formosa copper and zinc mine between 1990 and 1993. The company abandoned the 100-acre property in 1994. By 1997, the system they had installed to handle acid mine drainage was no longer working. As is the case with many other mines, some reclamation was accomplished by the company before its departure, but those efforts did not stop copper, cadmium, lead and zinc from polluting 18 miles of a nearby stream. According to the state, the contamination has "...severely harmed the ecosystem of these streams, including protected Coho and Steelhead salmon populations."

Metal mining has left 40 percent of western watersheds contaminated, and has left taxpayers with a $50 billion cleanup bill.

More information:

State of Oregon factsheet on abandoned mines
EPA website listing "Abandoned Mine Land" sites on the Superfund National Priority List. EPA's definition includes mining and mineral processing sites.
EPA factsheet on Formosa mine
On Thursday, Sept. 27 @ 9:30 a.m., the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold a hearing on hard-rock mining on federal lands. Scheduled witnesses are John Leshy (Harvard Law School) and Jim Butler (Parsons, Behle and Latimer).