BOARD01932

• Board Meeting Date: 5/22/2000
• Description: Flood Section - Rio Grande Basin - Alamosa River Watershed Project
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

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He suggested that the company adopt an
"environmental policy" with goals and objectives,
according to minutes of the meeting. Galactic also
could offer to clean up the acid coming from the old
mines as a gesture of good faith to increasingly
concerned state regulators, Massey said.

Two years later, on Aug. 24, 1992, Massey made
similar suggestions in a letter to Charles Russell, a
Galactic executive and board member.

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This time, it wasn't state regulators Massey hoped
to impress. Having a corporate environmental
policy "may be essential to the establishment of a
defense of due diligence in the event of prosecution
of Galactic's corporate directors or officers," he
wrote.

That same month, Galactic signed an agreement
with the state to clean up the site, at a cost of $25
million.

But according to depositions, Galactic executives,
who had been selling the company's assets since
the previous January in a frantic effort to raise
money for the cleanup, knew the agreement was
doomed even as they signed it.

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Colorado calls for EPA help

By mid-December 1992, the liquid was lapping the
top of the dike - 170 million gallons of water
contaminated with cyanide and heavy metal.

Galactic had put its Summitville subsidiary into
bankruptcy on Dec. 4, abandoning the mine to the
state. The parent company declared bankruptcy a
month later under Canadian law.

Colorado officials summoned the Environmental
Protection Agency.

Water was still running through Galactic's diggings
and into the old mines, pouring acid and metals into ..
Wightman Fork. .

http://www.denver-rrnn.com/news/0507smmtl.shtrnl 5/7/00