Feature

Brownfields grants help give new life to mining district

An area that once drew thousands looking to strike it rich off the land’s precious minerals, the Bayhorse Mining District in central Idaho may one day again see people flocking to its rugged lands.

The Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation (IDPR) wants to turn 540 acres in the mining district into a state historical park that showcases Idaho’s rich mining history. Plans call for catering to ATV recreationists, who will be able to tour the town of Bayhorse, now a well-preserved ghost town, and then travel by four-wheeler through beautiful scenery to four outlying mines. The mines would be connected by a trail system.

Rick Cummins, special projects coordinator for the IDRP, believes this unusual idea will work, sparking economic activity for nearby Challis, a small town where 14 percent of the people live below poverty. “We’re going to be able to offer something that’s only offered in a few places right now,” Cummins says.

For the Bayhorse Mining District to evolve into a tourism destination, however, contamination left behind from years of mining must first be cleaned up. Preparations for opening only the town site to the public will cost $1 million. The IDRP will tackle the clean-up project there this fall using, in part, a $200,000 brownfields grant from the EPA.

The Bayhorse Mining District, in many cases, is the exception to the rule. Not many abandoned mines in this country get a chance at revitalization. There are some 500,000 abandoned mine sites composed of hard rock and coalmines throughout the United States, according to the Mine-Scarred Lands Working Group.

With these lands come many complex economic, social and environmental issues. Abandoned mines can cause economic distress on a community that once relied heavily on the industry. There is often limited infrastructure or land suitable for development. Wastes from mining operations are often left behind in large gobb piles or waste dumps. Heavy metals such as arsenic and lead contaminate the lands. The contamination sometimes finds its way into streams and rivers. There are safety concerns with the shafts, rotting structures and equipment, and open pits left behind. Cleanup can be costly and difficult as mine sites often are located in remote areas.

The brownfields program has been able to add some relief. When the Small Business Liability Relief and Brownfields Revitalization Act was signed into law in 2002, it expanded the definition of brownfields to include mine-scarred lands, making these properties eligible for the benefits of the brownfields program.

In Idaho, the Bayhorse Mining District hadn’t been a priority for the state’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), says Bruce Wicherski, voluntary cleanup program manager there. That’s because the state has so many mine sites and limited resources, Wicherski says. In most cases, the mining companies owning these sites don’t have the money to clean them up, he adds.

But when IDPR came to DEQ with a plan, the focused changed. The mine, which hadn’t seen any activity since the 1980s, is in a remote area near the Salmon River that’s getting more popular with outdoor recreationists. The IDPR had stepped up to acquire the five parcels of land scattered across the 540 acres. Four of the parcels had been mining operations while the fifth parcel was the town site, where the ore was processed. That site is one of the best remaining ghost towns in the state. Preliminary assessments paid for by DEQ showed the cleanup project was doable. The pieces were beginning to fall into place.

And with those pieces also came three grants from EPA’s brownfields program. Along with the $200,000 grant for this fall’s cleanup at Bayhorse, IDPR was notified in May it has received two more cleanup grants totaling $339,840 for the cleanup of two of the four mines.

Cummins expects the remediation project at Bayhorse to take about 90 days. Most of the cleanup will be at the Bayhorse smelter and mill sites. The grant money will be used to clean up the tailings pile from the mill where crushed ore was piled. The smelter area will be capped off to create a parking lot. Other institutional controls, such as fencing, also will be implemented, Cummins says. He expects the town site to be open by next summer. Plans are to get the town site cleaned up first so it can generate some income for the project.

For Cummins, this project is a chance to give something back to the state. Not only will it honor a piece of the state’s past, but it also will be a reinvestment for its future.

The EPA’s Mine-Scarred Lands Initiative has partnered with six communities throughout the country on demonstration projects. It has developed a tool kit to help communities clean up and revitalize former mines by sharing models from the six projects and links to a range of resources. The tool kit is available at http://www.epa.gov/aml/revital/msl/.

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Problem Solver

Local inventory relies on public records

Whenever he shows someone the map listing the 56 properties in downtown Boise with potential petroleum contamination, Scot Oliver of the city’s urban renewal agency makes sure to reiterate to the public that just because a property is listed doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with it. The little red dots on the map can be intimidating to some people, he admits, but he isn’t trying to frighten anyone.

Oliver wants people to know that the inventory created by the Capital City Development Corporation (CCDC) is designed to help landowners and developers. In some cases, developers are better able to get incentives for revitalization projects if the property is listed, he says.

“We have from the beginning let people know this isn’t a regulatory program but a redevelopment program,” Oliver says.

Let’s face it: No property owner wants to see his land on a list of potential brownfields. Fears still remain out there that such a designation could lead to the devaluation of property; or, on the other end, a lawsuit for the creator of the inventory.

Still, the CCDC moved forward with a local inventory of potential sites in its three urban renewal districts in downtown Boise, believing it was important to identify sites being underused because of a real or perceived environmental liability. The CCDC received from the EPA two brownfields assessment grants of $200,000 each. Money from the grants has been used to create these inventories of properties with potential petroleum and hazardous substance contamination in an area that includes about 500 acres.

The petroleum list has been completed and published in the CCDC newsletter as well as on its Web site (http://www.ccdcboise.com/BFinventory.htm). A disclaimer on the Web site reads, “The presence of a property on any of these lists should in no way be construed to indicate that contamination actually exists on a property.”

When compiling this list, officials kept it simple to avoid problems. “In our case, we didn’t have anything that wasn’t on the public record,” Oliver says. “Or that you couldn’t observe by driving by the site.”

“We stuck to the basics,” agrees Mary Garner, an environmental specialist with Tetra Tech Inc., in Boise, the firm that helped the CCDC with the inventory.

The inventory process began by reviewing historic land use records, such as Sanborn fire insurance maps, Polk directories and underground storage tank inventories available from the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, EPA and the city. The information was complied into a geographic information system and combined with parcel data. More than 300 potential sites initially were flagged. About two-thirds of those were eliminated because they had been redeveloped over the years, Oliver says. At this point, the data wasn’t publicized because it could be spooky for some people, he says.

Officials continued to work on narrowing down that list by evaluating current uses of the identified properties. Locations that were realizing their highest and best use were removed from the list, as were those where plans for redevelopment already exist or are in the works. In other cases, documentation confirmed old storage tanks had been removed from the property and the site received a clean bill of health. And, in some cases, property owners had no interest in participating in the brownfields program.

This process eventually culminated in a list of 56 sites, which have been prioritized. The inventory includes photos of the sites and lists such information as address, parcel number, owner’s name and current occupant. It lists any federal or state designations, such as if there is a known leaking underground storage tank, if it is required to submit an annual toxic chemical release report or if the site is listed as having past or present clean-up activity associated with hazardous materials. On some listings, there is a summary of tank information. For example, one property, now being used as a parking lot, is described as having “13 tanks, 3,000 gallons or less, registered between 1949 and 1995. One tank listed as abandoned, two as closed.”

The next phase in the project is asking owners if they are interested in having an assessment completed on the property. These properties may be eligible for grant dollars through the CCDC. Work also continues on the inventory of properties with potential hazardous substance contamination, which has about 50 listings too.

The CCDC has had no complaints from people after the inventory was published, Oliver says. And they’ve found that these properties have no difference in value than their neighbors, he adds.

“(Brownfields) don’t have the negative consequences that they used to,” Garner says.

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About this newsletter.

To help raise awareness of the economic and environmental benefits of redevelopment, Building on Brownfields brings you news and information on brownfields in EPA Region 10: Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. The newsletter is funded by the EPA through Washington state's Department of Ecology, and is a cooperative effort between the four states and the EPA.

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