Mining would likely pollute groundwater
To the editor:
The State Legislature and the BEP are soon going to vote again about last year’s mining laws, as Alice Bolstridge succinctly said in a recent Star-Herald letter. The proposed Irving open-pit mine at Aroostook’s Bald Mountain is likely to pollute the groundwater of the St. John and Aroostook watersheds for hundreds or thousands of years because of the many nearby lakes, streams and rivers.
The Bald Mountain mine’s toxic “tailings pond,” a dump of long-lived amounts of sulfuric acid (battery acid) and arsenic, is likely to get into the watersheds’ groundwater. According to David Chambers, president of the Montana-based Center for Science in Public Participation, “Once acid drainage starts, it’s virtually impossible to stop. It’s going to move. This is especially true in mountainous areas.”
In 1997, John S. Cummings, a Maine geologist, discovered arsenic levels at the potential Bald Mountain site in rock up to 29,000 parts per million. That’s 2.9 million times the level the federal Environmental Protection Agency considers safe for drinking water. Cummings estimated the amount of toxic debris in the site’s pond would be 30 million tons.
The sulfide in the mining process lets loose in water. Maine’s past two years, 2012 and 2013, have been the rainiest since the beginning of recorded weather. If we get too much rain, the tailings pond would easily leak into the groundwater. Maine had not had any mines that have not contaminated the groundwater at a big ongoing expense to Maine taxpayers.
Irving is proposing a new detox method, “reverse osmosis,” the same process that didn’t work in the dry Western climate. If this “reverse osmosis” is so good, why does Irving want Maine to weaken the existing 1991 Maine mining laws?
Children are less able to take on a toxic load than adults. Trading our groundwater, health and biodiversity of our watersheds for non-itemized, non-sustainable mining jobs is likely to cost us big money to try to clean up. As Alice Bolstridge said last week, agriculture and sports fishing are much better and sustainable uses of our water for the region’s future. Irving’s jobs won’t be ours.
Please help save our groundwater and wilderness environment. Email tyler.washburn@legislature.maine.gov. Contact your state representative and senator. Ask them to vote not to loosen the existing 1991 mining regulations, [but] vote to strengthen them. Ask them to make the prospective mining company put billions of dollars into a trust fund first before granting them a mining permit. Ask them to require a third party without vested interests to verify the adequate amount and availability of cleanup funds as a precaution of the mining company going bankrupt.
Carol McKnight
Presque Isle
