New Law Finally Allows Conservationists To Clean Up Abandoned Mines

For decades, federal rules punished good Samaritans who tried to tackle toxic mine pollution. A new program removes barriers to restoring waterways across the West.

In central Idaho, the Triumph Mine produced silver, lead, and zinc from the late 1800s into the 1950s. But since shuttering operations decades ago, the mine has been an environmental hazard, with abandoned tunnels and tailings piles leaching arsenic and other heavy metals into nearby waterways.

In the 1990s, the mining company responsible for the site and the state came to an agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to clean it up, subject to federal Clean Water Act standards. They got to work removing toxic soils, managing contaminated discharge water, and plugging the old mine tunnel with concrete. Then, the company went bankrupt, leaving the state on the hook for the rest of the mess. Conservationists wanted to get involved to protect the nearby Big Wood River from further contamination, but federal liability laws stood in their way.

That has been the case at the Triumph Mine but also at the hundreds of thousands of abandoned mines across the West—until now. On Tuesday, President Joe Biden signed a bill that will protect from liability good Samaritans who want to remediate pollution from abandoned mines. The recent reforms are a breath of fresh air, removing illogical barriers to improving the environment that threatened to turn well-meaning conservationists into scapegoats for past pollution.

Federal agencies estimate that there could be half a million abandoned hard rock mines across the Western U.S.—vestiges of a frontier past. Many of them pose hazards to human safety or environmental health. As in the case of the Triumph Mine, the past owners of these operations are often long gone. "The mining companies aren't there anymore," Josh Johnson of the Idaho Conservation League told the local news station KTVB7 in November. "Either it is just so long ago that those companies don't exist, or the companies are more modern—but have gotten bankrupt."

For decades, few entities other than state remediation agencies have been willing to help, and for good reason. Under the Clean Water Act, anyone who wanted to clean up an abandoned mine assumed all liability for past, present, and future pollution from it, in perpetuity, the moment they undertook a cleanup effort.

Even if a conservation group or another mining company agreed to undertake work that significantly improved conditions, they could face crippling liability if they failed to meet often unattainable cleanup standards. The policy punished people for trying to help, deterring cleanup efforts and allowing toxic pollution to fester unchecked. This benefited no one—not the environment, not the surrounding communities, and certainly not conservationists who wanted to make a difference.

Trout Unlimited, a primary supporter of the new legislation, has been one of the rare groups willing to take on abandoned mine cleanup. "Over 40 percent of small mountain streams in the West are polluted by heavy metals from abandoned mines," said CEO Chris Wood. "This bill is about clean water and healthy communities. It will make it possible for organizations that had nothing to do with the causes of pollution to make our rivers and streams cleaner."

The law passed by Congress and signed by the president establishes a seven-year pilot program that waives liability if a good Samaritan undertakes a cleanup but is not able to remediate all of the pollution. These altruistic actors cannot be past or current owners or operators of the site, must not have played a role in creating the historic mine residue, and must not be potentially liable for the past mining pollution.

One site where Trout Unlimited has worked is the abandoned gold and silver Orphan Boy Mine near Alma, Colorado. Jason Willis, the director of the group's Western Abandoned Mine Lands Program, told Colorado Public Radio that liability rules prevented them from finishing the job. "We were able to do 90 percent of the project," he said, "but that last remaining 10 percent in this case, we were unable to do because of the liability concern." While the group could perform work like consolidating waste rock, it couldn't touch the site's pollution drainage to remediate it. "There are projects like this across Colorado," he continued, "that we could be tackling with this legislation."

Incentives matter for conservation. Unfortunately, counterproductive federal rules in place for far too long have stood in the way of cleaner water and healthier ecosystems. The new program will unshackle private groups who want to help repair the environmental damage of the past and truly start to tackle a problem that plagues headwaters across the West—a win for conservation and also for common sense.