DENVER — Two mining companies have agreed to pay the state of Colorado $20.5 million in damages for pollution from mines that sparked a gold rush in 1860 around Leadville.
State officials said the companies will also provide millions of dollars for remediation and maintenance of the California Superfund Site in and around the 10,200-foot-high town, about 100 miles west of Denver.
Under the agreement announced Tuesday by Colorado Attorney General John Suthers and Gov. Bill Ritter, Asarco will pay $10 million, while Resurrection/Newmont USA Ltd. will pay $10.5 million for damages.
Resurrection/Newmont spokesman Omar Jabara said the company agreed to pay an additional $28.4 million for remediation.
The California Gulch Superfund Site is an 18-square-mile area surrounding and including the town of Leadville. It is dotted with more than 2,000 piles of slag, tailings and waste rock and abandoned mine structures blamed for contaminating the upper Arkansas River basin.
People are also reading…
Messages left for Tucson-based Asarco were not immediately returned.
Added to the Superfund in 1983, nine of the site's original 12 geographic regions remain.
The settlement provides money for restoration of aquatic and wildlife habitat along the 11-mile reach of the Upper Arkansas River south of Leadville. It also provides for final reclamation of the Black Cloud Mine, according to Suthers' spokesman Nate Strauch.
The contamination is a legacy of Leadville's long-gone boom years, which were sparked by the discovery of gold in California Gulch in the spring of 1860. Between the mid-1800s and the 1990s, gold, silver, lead, zinc and finally molybdenum, a substance used to harden steel, were extracted from near the town.