Memorandum Agenda Item 11e 05/15/2000

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Land mine Page 9 of 20 Bechtel spokesman Jeff Berger denied that. By the time construction began, he said, Bechtel had limited its role to building the system that would separate gold from the cyanide solution after it was passed over the ore. All of that equipment was safely indoors. "It was not our decision to build those portions of the plant in winter," Berger said. Linkletter, the bank vice president, visited Summitville in November. More than a half-foot of snow had fallen, but"despite the cold and snow, they were able to work quite effectively," he said in a memo to the bank's files on Galactic. In his deposition, Linkletter said he thought Summitville was like Denver. "You can get some awful lousy days here but, you know, you play golf in February," he said. But no one was playing golf at Summitville, where Leonard had been told by his superiors to"do whatever it takes to finish on time to maintain the schedule, that cost is kind of not an object." "And I had my marching orders." Fighting stiff winds, workers tried to lay sheets of plastic, welding them with hot glue to create 25 acres of liner. The liner was supposed to keep the cyanide solution from seeping into groundwater. "On certain days, you just couldn't work outside," Leonard said. "Mechanically, if the wind was blowing, we might be able to remove the snow, but it would blow back before we could get anything done up there." Colorado's mine regulators understood winter in the Rockies, but they didn't interfere. "I remember people saying, 'This is a completely impractical proposal,"'said Barry, the assistant state Natural Resources director at the time. "But I also remember saying, 'Well, this is stupid, but it's their nickel, it's their risk."' In December, workers discovered that the sheets of plastic, glued during extreme cold, were coming apart. Galactic fired the subcontractor who was laying the plastic and hired another company. By now the project was months behind schedule. Then came an avalanche—in late April. Mounds of snow and tons of loose rock ripped up the plastic liner. "It was one big mess to look at," Leonard recalled. As the spring storm melted, water pooled at the bottom of the cyanide leach pad. Water—either from the melting avalanche or from the fire hoses workers used to speed the melting—ran between the plastic sheets and the clay liner below, making deep ruts in the clay. Further, the plastic sheets had been ripped from their anchors at the top f the hill and were sliding down the side of the valley, which was steeper than http://www.denver-imn.cominews/0507smmtl.shtml 5/7/00