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Last modified
1/29/2010 10:12:00 AM
Creation date
10/5/2006 2:36:28 AM
Metadata
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Template:
Floodplain Documents
County
Rio Grande
Conejos
Community
Summitville
Stream Name
Alamosa River
Basin
Rio Grande
Title
An Unnatural Disaster: Summitville
Date
5/7/2000
Prepared For
State of Colorado
Prepared By
Rocky Mountain News
Floodplain - Doc Type
Miscellaneous
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<br />L<B>and</B> <B>mine</B> <br /> <br />ge 0_ <br /> <br />Bechtel spokesman Jeff Berger denied that. <br /> <br />By the time construction began, he said, Bechtel had limited its role to <br />bUilding the system that would separate gold from the cyanide solution after <br />it was passed over the ore. All of that equipment was safely indoors. <br /> <br />"It was not our decision to build those portions of the plant in winter," Berger <br />said. <br /> <br />Linkletter, the bank vice president, visited Summitville in November. <br /> <br />More than a half-foot of snow had fallen, but "despite the cold and snow, <br />they were able to work quite effectively," he said in a memo to the bank's <br />files on Galactic. <br /> <br />In his deposition, Linkletter said he thought Summitville was like Denver. <br /> <br />"You can get some awful lousy days here but, you know, you play golf in <br />February," he said. <br /> <br />But no one was playing golf at Summitville, where Leonard had been told by <br />his superiors to "do whatever it takes to finish on time to maintain the <br />schedule, that cost is kind of not an object." <br /> <br />"And I had my marching orders." <br /> <br />Fighting stiff winds, workers tried to lay sheets of plastic, welding them with <br />hot glue to create 25 acres of liner. The liner was supposed to keep the <br />cyanide solution from seeping into groundwater. <br /> <br />"On certain days, you just couldn't work outside," Leonard said. <br />"Mechanically, if the wind was blowing, we might be able to remove the <br />snow, but it would blow back before we could get anything done wp there." <br /> <br />By now the project was months behind schedule. <br /> <br /> <br />Colorado's mine regulators un<:lerstood winter in the Rockies, but they didn't <br />interfere. <br /> <br />"I remember people saying, 'This is a completely impractical proposal,'" said <br />Barry, the assistant state Natural Resources director at the time. "But I also <br />remember saying, 'Well, this is stupid, but it's their nickel, irs their risk.'" <br /> <br />I n December, workers discovered that the sheets of plastic, glued during <br />extreme cold, were coming apart. Galactic fired the subcontractor who was <br />laying the plastic and hired another company. <br /> <br />Then came an avalanche - in late April. Mounds of snow and tons of loose <br />rock ripped up the plastic liner. <br /> <br />"It was one big mess to look at," Leonard recalled. <br /> <br />As the spring storm melted, water pooled at the bottom of the cyanide leach <br />pad. Water - either from the melting avalanche or from the fire hoses <br />workers used to speed the melting - ran between the plastic sheets and <br />the clay liner below, making deep ruts in the clay. <br /> <br />Further, the plastic sheets had been ripped from their anchors at the top of <br />the hill and were sliding down the side of the valley, which was steeper than <br /> <br />http://www.denver-rmn.comlnews/0507 smmt I.shtml <br /> <br />517100 <br />
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