A team of engineers from the Environmental Protection Agency has successfully repaired two leaking mine-tailings ponds near Rico and installed other safeguards, the EPA reported last week.

The backed-up series of settling ponds had been overflowing untreated mine waste into the adjacent Dolores River watershed because of an unmaintained treatment system and clogged piping. Spring runoff draining through abandoned mine tunnels was threatening to cause soil berms to fail, which would have caused thousands of gallons of toxic sludge to spill into the adjacent Dolores River.

The EPA’s Emergency Response team completed the job at the end of April, according to EPA attorney Sheldon Muller. The ponds drain the long abandoned St. Louis Tunnels of the Argentine Mine located within Telescope Mountain.

"As I understand it, they replaced two drains, installed an overflow pipe so that if the ponds backs up again the waste won’t drain into the river, and built up berms with three more feet of soil," Muller said.

A broken concrete barrier designed to direct mine effluent from the nearby Blaine Tunnel to the St. Louis tunnel and into the settling pond operation was not repaired, and continues to discharge untreated mine waste into Silver Creek, a tributary of the Dolores River. Muller said that repair is too large for the EPA’s team to handle at this point.

In a federal complaint filed in July 1999, the EPA, the State of Colorado and the U.S. government ordered the owners of the ponds — Virginia Sell and Wayne Webster of the now dissolved Rico Development Corporation — to maintain the system, abandoned since 1994. The complaint charges the defendants with violating the requirements of Federal Clean Water Act and for failing to monitor and report discharge of downstream pollutants, including arsenic, silver, zinc, cadmium copper and lead, into the Dolores River and Silver Creek.

"We will be seeking penalties against RDC for operating the system without a permit, to force them to operate and maintain the system at their expense and for the costs we incurred for repairing what we did," Muller said, adding that RDC could face penalties of up to $25,000 for every day they were in violation of their discharge permit issued by the Colorado Department of Health.

The defendants failed to reach a settlement agreement by the May 2 deadline, prompting EPA attorneys to begin preparing for a trial, Muller said.

Webster, of Athens, Texas, said in April that beaver activity was to blame for the problem and said that he could not afford to take over maintenance operations for the ponds that he owns.

Eric Heil, Rico’s town manager and attorney who has been prodding the EPA to take action for several years, said he was pleased that a repair was made before an environmental disaster occurred.