SILVERTON – On any given summer day, Silverton is teeming with tourists eager to explore the vestiges of the town’s rustic mining history and access the peaks of the San Juan Mountains. They arrive by Jeep, bicycle, RV and, of course, the historic narrow gauge railroad. Their dollars are critical to the town’s longevity.

Silverton has just 622 full-time residents and about 50% of its jobs are in the tourism or service industry.

This summer, there are a few new visitors in town: construction workers who have begun building a solid mine waste repository at the Mayflower Mill, located north of Silverton on County Road 2. The repository will permanently store solid waste from the treatment plant processing water flowing from the Gold King Mine, as well as other sites in the Bonita Peak Mining District.

The project is the second major step in the district to remediate the impacts of historic mining activity – and locals are hesitant to fully throw support behind it.

When the 2015 Gold King Mine spill thrust Silverton into a national spotlight and made a federal Superfund designation all but inevitable, leaders in the community realized they needed to consecrate a mechanism through which the town could participate in decision-making.

“What we wanted was to have a seat at the table,” said San Juan County Administrator William “Willy” Tookey.

Tookey has spent 20 years in the administrator position and over 40 years working in local government in and around Silverton (the county’s interests overlap greatly with those of the town, because fewer than 100 people live in unincorporated San Juan County).

During that time, the town has been forced to confront the impacts of unremediated mining operations, which have left draining tunnels, heavy metal contamination and ruined infrastructure scattered about the peaks surrounding Silverton.

The relationship between the federal agency and Silverton, which is deeply invested and affected by outcomes of the cleanup, has been varied.

The Gold King Mine spill was caused by Environmental Protection Agency contractors who accidentally compromised material holding back millions of gallons of heavy metal-laden water.

“That has actually added a lot of complications to the whole relationship,” said the county’s Director of Emergency Management Jim Donovan, who was hired just a month before the spill.

The Bonita Peak Mining District – the title given to the Superfund site around Silverton, chosen intentionally to avoid naming the site after the town – surrounds, but does not fall within city limits.

As the cleanup has progressed, caring residents have made a concerted effort to have their concerns heard.

The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, otherwise known as the Superfund program, has a mechanism – Community Advisory Groups – through which those affected by environmental hazards can provide input to the EPA during the cleanup process.

The EPA’s website describes CAGs as groups that are “designed to serve as the focal point for the exchange of information” among stakeholders in a Superfund cleanup.

But Silverton officials were uncertain of the concept.

“We wanted that seat at the table to be different from the traditional CAG,” Tookey said. “What we wanted was to be able to sit down with EPA and other federal and state agencies and discuss these issues prior to them being implemented.”

And so, Silverton leaders organized the Bonita Peak Mining District Planning Group, of which the Silverton Planning group is a subsection. And when then-Gov. John Hickenlooper requested a Superfund designation, he requested that Silverton be given a seat at the table other than a CAG.

Upon the creation of the district, two community groups were created: a CAG and a Planning Group.

Both are somewhat unusual.

The CAG, which was born out of a group called the Animas River Stakeholders, focuses on Animas River water quality. Its members are highly engaged and well-educated on draining mine remediation, EPA officials say.

The Planning Group’s concern is Silverton, and how to work with involved agencies, as well as the CAG, to ensure the town’s interests are addressed as cleanup ensues.

“The difference is … the CAG stems from the Animas River Stakeholders Group, which also included Silverton and Durango folks. And I think they’re really concerned about water quality and fisheries, and aquatic health of this area,” said EPA Remedial Project Manager Joy Jenkins. “… Whereas in the town, that’s of concern as well, but then they are also living in and amongst the work that’s happening in the Superfund site.”

KC Becker, the administrator for EPA Region 8, called the relationship between all the stakeholders, including the two citizen groups, “very functional.”

The CAG – an official entity – holds meetings publicly and part of its responsibility is to disseminate information to the public. Because of litigation around who was at fault for the Gold King spill, Tookey said federal agencies had to be careful with what was said in that forum.

“The working group allowed us to have working meetings where everybody could just kind of take the gloves off and throw out whatever we were thinking and if we had issues or concerns we could throw them out there and not worry about ruffling any feathers,” he said.

Although the relationship has not always been harmonious, Silverton had little choice but to work with the EPA after Gold King.

When 3 million gallons of mustard-yellow water flowed into the Animas River out of Cement Creek, the town’s name became associated with mine waste. And given regulations that inhibit independent groups taking action to clean up draining mines, a Superfund designation was the only way the problem was likely to be addressed.

But, as Donovan puts it, the agency has a “one-size-fits-all” approach to these issues.

“The EPA is, as a federal agency, not necessarily that nimble in adjusting to the local community needs, and that has continually been a challenge from minute one that this incident started,” he said.

EPA officials are cognizant of how the agency’s work impacts the town.

“Remedies we do – they’re going to feel and see more,” Jenkins said.

In light of the localized impact, Tookey said the EPA has been responsive.

Early on, when the agency was putting together an informational brochure about Cement Creek, the waterway that bore the Gold King spill, the graphics included a skull and crossbones. This did not sit well with the Planning Group.

“We looked at that and it’s like, ‘We don’t need to scare people away – we need to give them information,’” Tookey said.

The Planning Group also retains local knowledge on topics such as local wildlife habits, which has proved to be relevant in discussions about cleanup at sites where local elk herds graze.

Still, some requests have been unmet. The group has often tried to advocate for the hiring of local contractors, but Tookey says the extent to which that has been honored has been “very minimal.”

The construction of the mine waste repository, which began last month, is one of the few times that local contractors have been hired, Tookey said. But some leaders, such as Donovan, still have other concerns about the project.

“From the local perspective, it’s difficult to see: ‘Is there an end state to this? Or are we just going to kind of keep moving waste around in the county to different locations?’” he said.

Donovan said the town’s residents are fully aware that the mining occurred in their vicinity.

The problem, he contends, is that remediation sometimes prioritizes downstream interests. He points to a recent meeting with the Colorado Attorney General to discuss how to spend settlement money stemming from natural resource damages. The meeting was held in Durango.

“That just kind of shows how this is all played out,” Donovan said.

EPA officials say they understand the discomfort with storing mine waste in Silverton, but making it disappear just isn’t feasible.

“The mining was done here, the mining waste is here, and it is a closer location to have a long-term repository for it,” Jenkins said. “When you consider moving it somewhere else, you’re moving that mining impact to a different place.”

Tookey said he is grateful that throughout the public input process on the repository, the EPA was responsive to concerns about the timing of trucks moving down Greene Street, Silverton’s tourist-laden main drag. Although he, too, is not so certain that a solid waste repository in Silverton’s backyard is such a great solution, the Planning Group’s voice was important nonetheless.

As administrators at the EPA cycle in and out, Tookey and Donovan are among a roster of Silverton residents who have remained consistently engaged.

“We are in it for the long term, and our community is very engaged,” Donovan said.

rschafir@durangoherald.com