Stabilizing Mine
Is First Priority

This week the EPA announced that immediate action is being taken at the Elizabeth Mine Site to address stability issues at the largest tailing pile (TP-1) to prevent possible catastrophic failure of this structure. Federal, state and local officials are taking needed and appropriate action.

It should be noted that what is now being done is quite different from what was originally proposed for the site by the EPA. Initial presentations put forth a landfill type solution of consolidation, regrading, and capping to the problem with run-off from the site affecting the quality of water in the West Branch of the Ompompanoosuc. This type of solution was the favored option of all the participating groups in the Elizabeth Mine Community Advisory Group except for the Citizens for a Sensible Solution. We favored a approach that put forth stabilization instead of regrading.

It now is clear that if the regrading approach had been taken, it could have caused the structural failure that officials now seek to prevent.

Some credit for the change from the regrading to the stabilization approach should go to Citizens for a Sensible Solution consulting geotechnical engineer Dick McGaw. His January 2002 report, "A Critical Evaluation of Slope Stability and Drainage of Surface and Ground Water at the Elizabeth Mine Site", was the first to point out that the two largest tailing piles were in effect earthen dams which needed water diversion and stabilization to insure their integrity.

He was assisted in his efforts by Johnny Johnson, a mining engineer, who sent him technical papers from the 1940's on construction of mine tailing piles, Strafford Historian Gwenda Smith, who provided archival photographs of the mine site, and James Condict, a former mine employee whose recollections confirmed that the piles were constructed as specified in the engineering diagrams of that day.

After a meeting where Dick McGaw made a presentation at engineering firm Arthur D. Little's Boston headquarters, the EPA to their credit changed course and made stabilization the preferred option. Studies taken since then have not only confirmed Dick's original hypothesis but have also shown the need for immediate corrective action.

It is clear that the Elizabeth Mine Site, one of our nations oldest mines, whose activities span from before the war of 1812 to after the Korean War, is much more complex than initially thought and a simple landfill type solution is not at all appropriate.

The current phased approach in which the most pressing concerns of stabilization and water diversion are the first steps is the correct way to proceed. It should receive the support from all parties and the needed funding from the federal government.

John Freitag, Chair

Citizens for a Sensible Solution

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