ARCO says mine cleanup responsibility lacks fair approach

[The Straight Story]

ARCO says mine cleanup responsibility lacks fair approach

The recent decision of Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) not to perform the EPA’s requests for immediate dust mitigation and PCB removal at the old Anaconda Mine site has several in the community asking “why?”

Recent information from the Yerington Community Action Group (CAG), charges British Petroleum (BP) subsidiary, and named mine site responsible party, ARCO with “legal foot dragging” or “legal manipulation” when it comes to performing cleanup work requested/ordered vie the EPA.

In a press release, CAG Contact Peggy Pauly said the CAG is “not surprised by the failure of BP to react to the public health hazards they have created.” She later elaborated charging this is an average response when it comes to ARCO’s cleanup efforts.

Cindy Wymore, public affairs director for BP, said it is not a case of avoiding work in as much as it is a desire to fairly distribute cleanup responsibilities.

http://www.rgj.com/news/stories/html/2006/01/05/109799.php?sps=rgj.com&sch=MVN&sp1=rgj.com&sp2=MasonValleyNews&sp3=MasonValleyNews&sp5=MasonValleyNews.com&sp6=news&sp7=local_news&jsmultitag=news.rgj.com/yerington

[enlightenment]

1. It would be interesting to see ownership in terms of

percentage of time owned and operated as a mining operation. I suspect that ARCO (and Anaconda) would hold the big numbers there.

[ladjf]

2. The Saga incident may have been the most flagrant example

of malfeasance in the history of American mining. All we see in the news it interviews with the grieving families and the media covering it's ass.

What about the fact that the miners were with 2,000 of good air, or that there was no debris blocking the tunnel? What about the fact that they could have simply walked out? Or, that the regular mine shuttle cart could have been driven right up to where they were? They could have been rescued within an hour.

Why were there no auxiliary breathing and first aid caches placed along the tunnel route? (this measure was being practiced in America at least as early as 1912.)

Why wasn't an adequately designed robot-probe vehicle preplaced at the mine entrance?

Why weren't multiple air holes drilled to the miners? (Only 260 deep)

Why aren't criminal charges being leveled at the mine ownership for negligence?

These are the questions we should be hearing about but we only get the "human interest" angles. The only information we've been given is that "miners or proud people" and that they put their faith in the Lord.

[Nikki Stone 1]

3. Good list. Criminal charges should definitely be brought

....

[ladjf]

5. The statements in my post about the 2,000 ft and no debris

in tunnel were derived from an article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution from a couple of days ago. I've seen nothing about this since. The thought that one man could have simply walked or ridden to the miner's location without any impediment whatsoever haunts me. Why didn't the miners send at least one of their group upwards on a exploratory try? Had they known how inept the rescue efforts were, they most definitely would have been heading for the surface. They knew that the mine company had no rescue team, that alone would have added 12 hours to the rescue.

[SoCalDem]

4. This is the goal of deregulation

By chipping away at the regulations, it soon becomes apparent that NO oNE is ultimately to blame. Things that used to be firm rules and regs turn into "suggestions" or "voluntary regulations"..Companies can weasel out, and poor people have no powerful lobbyists to fight for them.

The occasuional dead poor person is cheaper to the company than to reinstate powerful safety regulations or to allow unions back in.

If a mining company gets some blame for an accident, look for that mine to get "merged, acquired. put up for sale, bankruptcied, or closed".

[ladjf]

6. Money is the goal of fascism. Humans are expendable.

In fact, machinery is likely to be treated more carefully due to cost considerations. The twelve dead miners cost the company NOTHING. However, had they lost a couple of the coal digging machines, that would have bothered them. Maybe that's why the rescuers seemed immobilized by the fear of subsequent explosions. They might have lost a few millions dollars worth of mining equipment.

[Xithras]

7. I wonder how they'll clean it up.

There's a mobile home park above the Yerington mine, and one of my moms exes had family there who worked the mine. To get to it, you actually had to take the public road THROUGH the mine, where your little tiny car had to share the road with monstrously large mining vehicles. The mine was an experience.

This mine has two major problems to deal with, and neither is going to be easy. Dust has always been a major problem there, but since the mine is sitting in the desert the solution is a bit more complex than simply spreading some grass seed. The only way to water any plants would be to use the poisoned water from the holding pond, or pull water from the already overtapped river that borders one side of the mine. Since the river water is already spoken for and the poisoned water isn't an option, it will be interesting to see how they deal with this quandary.

The other major problem is that holding pond itself. It's several thousand feet long and a couple thousand feet wide, its full of poisons, and the only thing separating it from the Walker River is a dirt levee. They can't dump the water, it will take forever to evaporate, and PCB's are extremely difficult to filter, so again there's no simple solution.