BLM: Mine site owner not protecting workers

Molly Ball

Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2004 | 9:28 a.m.

The company responsible for cleaning up a radioactive former mine site in Lyon County is refusing to protect its workers from radiation, a move that might violate occupational safety laws, according to a letter to the company from one of the agencies working on the site.

In the strongly worded letter, the federal Bureau of Land Management warns the Atlantic Richfield Co. that its health and safety plan does not address the known "radiological hazards" present on the mine site.

The letter states the company's plan "As currently drafted ... does not, BLM believes, adequately safeguard ARC's employees, contractors or agents."

Last week, after years of wrangling with the three government agencies overseeing the cleanup, the company began work on the site -- testing the soil, water and air of the part of the mine where ore was processed.

For about a year residents around the former Anaconda Copper Mine in Yerington have been drinking bottled water -- supplied by ARCO, now a subsidiary of energy giant British Petroleum -- and warned not to drink from their wells, which were found to contain uranium.

In July tests by the BLM showed elevated radiation levels in the soil of central area of the site, where copper was processed when the mine was operating. Those results led the agency to require heightened protections for its workers on the site, such as respirators and Tyvek suits, to avoid liability.

The BLM letter, dated Sept. 20, reminds the company that it could be held liable if its worker protections are found to be insufficient and advises ARCO to consult the applicable requirements of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Nevada has refused to agree to list the site as Superfund, the federal priority list for toxic cleanups. A listing would enable the agencies to tell the company what to do, but the state argues that ARCO has shown itself willing to clean up the site without the need for federal intervention.

Gov. Kenny Guinn's natural resources adviser, Steve Robinson, said he had not seen the letter but believed ARCO was doing its job.

"To this point, we've not seen anything to indicate that ARCO has been anything else but a responsible party at the site," he said.

The letter refutes that argument, said Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who favors Superfund listing.

"Whether it's environmental pollution or radiation levels, it seems that those responsible for this mess hope to do as little as possible -- rather than doing what's right to protect public health and safety," Reid said in a statement.

"I believe that the Yerington mine is an environmental and public health disaster and it should be a Superfund site. This letter is more support for my position," Reid said.

For its part, the company said the letter was "confusing."

The letter "says our health and safety plan isn't adequate, but it doesn't provide any detail -- it doesn't tell us what's wrong with it," Dan Ferriter, ARCO's environmental manager, said.

"We are taking all kinds of measures to make sure we're not exposing our workers to radiological hazards," he said. The workers carry dosimeters, which measure their radiation exposure, and must wash their hands regularly.

The radiation of the area is measured every 10 minutes, and if it is found to be dangerously elevated, further precautions are taken, Ferriter said.

Wayne Garcia, chairman of the Yerington Paiute Tribe, whose reservation is located about four miles north of the site, said he found it "just amazing" that ARCO would put its own workers in a potentially risky situation.

The agencies have found that "people can work out there if they have the proper training and equipment, and it's up to Atlantic Richfield to make sure that's followed," he said. The tribe favors Superfund listing.

Garcia accused ARCO of stalling the process to avoid expense. "They know how it needs to be done, but they're dragging their feet to do only the minimum," he said.

The site was a copper mine from the 1950s to 1970s. Another company, Arimetco, also operated on the site but is now bankrupt and unlikely to contribute to cleanup efforts. As the owner of one of the companies that contaminated the site, ARCO has taken responsibility for the cleanup since the 1980s.

Newly released soil-test data show alpha and beta radiation levels outside that central processing area that are as high or higher than those inside it, including tests of a site alongside a road that runs through the site.

Burch Drive is the main route from the town of Yerington, on the east side of the 3,600-acre mine site, to the neighborhood of Weed Heights, which abuts the mine to the west.

An area just a few yards north of the road posted some of the highest radiation levels, according to a BLM map and a laboratory report posted on the Web site of the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection recently.

Some officials have said that ARCO has consistently refused to acknowledge the red flags raised by such tests and tried to avoid further testing.

"These numbers by themselves don't necessarily say that people are going to be harmed by this stuff initially," said Jim Sickles, remedial project manager for the federal Environmental Protection Agency. "But we have to see what the extent of it is."

The laboratory report shows that levels of the radioactive element radium in the newly tested areas were above acceptable amounts across the board: all 17 of the sample points exceeded the "preliminary remediation goal," the EPA's benchmark for cleanup efforts.

The highest radium level was 21 times that goal number. The samples also showed levels of the element thorium as high as 47 times the goal amount for that substance.

Uranium levels were similarly high, but the lab report noted errors in testing for that element that could have distorted the results.