Ater $18 Million in Fed Dollars,
River Is More Orange Than Ever
By John Freitag

The Ompompanoosuc River in South Strafford was photographed last week just a half-mile downstream of the entrance of Copperas Brook. The brook drainis the sit of the Elizabeth Mine, and old copper mine that closed in the 1950s. Some $18 million in Superfund money has been spent to stablize the site and make the river cleaner. The latter goal, however, seems farm from being reached.

Work on the largest environmental remediation project ever attempted in Central Vermont continues this summer at the Elizabeth Mine Superfund site in Strafford. By the end of this construction season, over $18 million will have been spent.

Unfortunately, the goal of the project,—improving the water quality in the West Branch of the Ompompanoosuc River—has not yet been achieved.

In fact, the West Branch has turned orange and a sickly green. While decreasing in intensity of color the further one goes downstream, the West Branch is visually impacted all the way to the confluence with the East Branch just before Union Village Dam.

Jim Condict, who grew up in Strafford and worked at the mine from 1955-1957 and lives near the Ompompanoosuc said, "I have never seen it like what it has been in the last two years, and this year is worse than last year.

"Whatever they have done has increased the substances in the river and coated nearly everything."

Condict added that while in the past there have been storm events when the river changed color, "it has never been this bad, even when the mines were in operation."

His feelings are echoed by Michael Hanitchak, director of the Native American Program at Dartmouth, who also lives near the river and travels beside it on his way to Hanover. "I have never seen it so bad as this year," he said.

His wife, Sherry St. Germaine, put it even more bluntly. "What they have done up there has made it far worse," she said.

It is believed by many area people that the orange color, which used to be limited to a small area but now goes on for well over a mile, has been caused by an increase in iron coming from the site since remediation efforts began over four years ago.

At the state Department of Environmental Conservation, engineer John Schmeltzer does not dispute the reports.

"It’s fair to say the river does look more orange," he admitted this week. But it’s not clear that the cause is the remediation effort.

He noted that past findings show that the orange color—resulting from a high iron content—does not have any effect on human health. The effect on tiny organisms in the water is more difficult to track.

Schmeltzer had one piece of good news. The state’s monitoring stations have shown big reductions in the large amounts of sediment that used to run into Copperas Brook and thence to the Ompompanoosuc. That is doubtless a result of the stabilization efforts, he said.

The clean-up efforts have involved the removal of established vegetation from the site, moving thousands of tons of tailings, and opening channels long buried beneath the largest tailing pile.

EPA officials, too, are reluctant to attribute problems in the West Branch to the $18-million in work being done at the site.

They note that a testing site above the mine has also decreased in quality, going from very good to good during last year’s tests. More tests will be done by the state this fall.

In the meantime the visual aspects of the river have raised considerable comment. Community technical advisors have been asked to push the EPA on exactly what is occurring and what can be done about it. A meeting with the EPA and the advisors is scheduled for this week.