GRANTS, N.M. – For decades, residents living near the former Homestake uranium mill have been clamoring for Barrick Gold to move the Large Tailings Pile and restore their groundwater to usable condition. Now that they know it is “technically infeasible” to do so, they're reluctant to let the owners go.
Not because they love Homestake Mining Company of California, but because they want to be in the best position possible to ensure the survival of future generations when Barrick Gold, owner of the site, finally closes the gate and walks away.
Barrick officials met Sept. 9 with the community and members of environmental groups that have worked alongside them for decades to address leaks, spills, and a traveling plume of groundwater contamination at the Grants Reclamation Project site.
Controlling Contamination The company has reduced groundwater constituent concentrations to levels that are as low as reasonably achievable and has requested an alternate concentration limit – ACL – of 50 milligrams per liter for cleanup of groundwater from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Homestake/Barrick Gold also is in the process of buying up homes and parcels of land within the 1,000 year long-term control boundary. As of the filing of the ACL application in June, Homestake had obtained ownership of approximately 86% of the surface estate – a mix of vacant, residential and business/commercial parcels – and 77% of the subsurface estate.
Rachel Gabaldon, community relations specialist, said when they first started the acquisitions there were 530 parcels. Homestake/Barrick now has purchased 489 of those and has about 41 to go. “Currently we are working with possibly half of the 41 that are interested in talking to us,” she said.
Elemental Surprises
Despite best efforts to control contamination, Mother Nature has thrown Homestake a few curveballs over the years. During the monsoon rains of July 2010, 2 inches of rain fell in Murray Acres in about two hours, flooding portions of the subdivision located less than a mile from the site, as well as other areas.
Jerry Schoeppner of New Mexico Environment Department said at the time that although there was a berm located around portions of the Small Tailings Pile to control top runoff from going over the sidewalls during storms, and to convey water to the drainage pipes, “the storm of this magnitude was too large for the drainage pipes to manage.”
Homestake repaired cuts in the tailings pile created by erosion and installed additional pipe to drain the top crest berm area down to the toe of the pile.
A month later, on Aug. 4, Homestake received temporary permission from NMED's Ground Water Quality Bureau to apply approximately 1,026 gallons per minute of water with elevated levels of uranium, selenium, sulfate and total dissolved solids onto a parcel of land known as Section 34 for 120 days. The state said it believed continued irrigation was necessary to maintain hydraulic containment of the southern plume. The land is located about a mile southwest of Homestake, in and south of the Felice Acres subdivision.
Homestake had been discharging contaminated water for a number of years to four parcels of land it owned, but was instructed in 2009 to cease irrigation activities after New Mexico changed its standard for uranium in groundwater from 5 milligrams per liter to .03 mg/l.
Historic Flooding
In September 2013, monsoon rains caused historic flooding in Milan, especially impacting the Mormon Farms area where U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 6, was developing a staging area off Ralph Card Road for radioactive soils and materials from residential homes, unbeknownst to local residents.
EPA's Warren Zehner and Jon Rinehart, onscene coordinators, said at the time that 19 out of approximately 92 subdivision residences near the Homestake site showed radionuclide contamination in excess of healthbased levels.
After extensive technical review EPA concluded that the source of the radiation was not consistent with the contamination associated with Homestake. Rather, it matched mining-related process waste so the residences were not cleaned up as part of the ongoing Homestake remediation activities.
Not 'Home Depot'
When the mines were closing, they had a lot of surplus building material and sub-economic ore, Zehner said. “Several people in the Grants Mineral Belt have described the mines as their 'Home Depot' back in the 1960s and '70s because the mines – basically when something was not useful to them anymore – they opened it up to the employees,” who would haul away timbers, tin and wiring and use those in their homes.
Especially in the Village of San Mateo, residents would bring gravel from the mines, mix it with cement, and pour sidewalks and foundations out of the contaminated material, Zehner said.
After the September flood and protests from residents, EPA reached an agreement with C&E Concrete to move the staging area from Mormon Farms to the company's asphalt plant property off Highway 605 in Milan. Approximately 2,000 cubic yards of material above 3.5 picoCuries per gram were moved from the 19 residential properties near Homestake and the Bluewater area.
Spills continue
Pamela Schreiner, who discovered EPA's activities at Mormon Farms in 2013, attended the Sept. 9 meeting. She asked whether Homestake had had any spills in the last six months. Homestake officials said there had been two.
The first spill, reported to NMED in April, occurred when a pipe was hit during construction of the evapotranspiration cover. Approximately 9,000 gallons of water were released to the ground, based upon a 600gallon per minute leak rate for approximately 15 minutes.
A couple thousand cubic yards of impacted material were relocated to the Small Tailings Pile. The soil was sampled after cleanup to confirm it met the background standard next to it. It didn't. After further soil removal, NMED confirmed that the cleanup was complete.
On Aug. 26, during ongoing construction activities, an operator was in the wrong area and damaged a pipe. Upon inspection, it was found to be split. Regulators were notified and an estimated 25 gallons of waste product were cleaned up. Approximately 28 cubic yards of contaminated material were scraped and transported to the on-site disposal facility.
Need water?
Aaron Dean's home was among those impacted by the 100-year flood of 2013. He said homeowners in his area – Ralph Card Road, Nursery Road and Stanley Card Road – were still waiting for Homestake to come talk to them.
“We never got any contact, anything like that. They condemned my well. I have to go off the Village of Milan's water too, and I still haven't heard anything. We had 3 foot of contaminated water on our property for over a month and nothing has ever been done. My neighbor's house got knocked off the blocks, the water was so bad going through there.”
Tracy Hobbs said there are six properties directly behind the Village of Milan ballfield that were flooded. “If my house was not tied down, it would have floated down the road – I have not been contacted by anyone.”
Homestake's Eric Burch and Adam Arguello noted that the company entered into an agreement in the 1980s to hook up everyone to the Village of Milan municipal water supply. The agreement was for 10 years. But in 2018 Homestake began paying for residents' water again.
“So if you are in this area and you are not on Village of Milan water, we want to talk to you because we will pay to have your house hooked up,” Burch said. “Based on our survey, everybody is hooked up. But if you're not, come and talk to us. If you are within that boundary and you are paying for your Village of Milan water, please come and talk to us. Rachel specifically.”