Leviathan Mine will likely overflow this spring

Friday, Feb. 25, 2000 | 12:18 p.m.

While millions of gallons of polluted water could pour into Leviathan Creek, the amount likely will be less than the amount in past years when little or no work was done to stop the overflow.

"It should be about 5 million gallons less than it would be if they hadn't done anything up there, and that's a good thing," said Kevin Mayer, Superfund project manager for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "I think we're really learning what it's going to take to stop the ponds from overflowing in a typical year."

Located in Alpine County, Calif., 25 miles south of Gardnerville, Nev., the Leviathan Mine drains acidic water - containing dissolved toxic metals such as iron, copper, aluminum, nickel and arsenic - into Leviathan Creek.

The creek, so polluted it can't support aquatic life, runs into Bryant Creek, a tributary of the East Fork of the Carson River. The Carson runs into Nevada.

The Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board took over the mine in the 1980s, and state officials estimate it has taken care of 70 percent of the problem.

Five evaporation ponds can hold about 16 million gallons of toxic water. But only a few million gallons evaporate in a year, and overflowing still occurs in years of heavy spring runoff.

Lahontan officials last summer built a $1 million system for treating the contaminated pond water in order to create capacity for more runoff.

The EPA and ARCO -which bought Anaconda Co., the one-time owner of the mine responsible for the contamination - tried to build similar systems previously without success.

Lahontan treated about 4.5 million gallons of polluted water in 1999, and nearly that amount evaporated, leaving 9 million gallons of capacity to catch runoff in the winter and spring of this year.

The problem now, however, is that only about 2.7 million gallons of capacity remain, leading officials to believe overflow again is probable.

The EPA last year proposed to list the mine as a federal Superfund site, and Mayer said the listing could become official as early as April. Superfund status, ensuring money and resources for cleanup, would mark the 250-acre site as one of the most polluted places in the country.