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Penn Mine Near Clean

East Bay MUD is putting the final touches on its cleanup of Penn Mine. The former copper and zinc mine, which was abandoned in 1954, had long fouled the Mokelumne River with heavy metals and sulfuric acid - during its peak years of operation, all aquatic life was wiped out for forty miles downstream. EBMUD doesn't actually own the site (apparently nobody actually has a deed to the property) but it became involved in the cleanup when it built the nearby Camanche Reservoir.

The federal government told the agency that it was responsible for cleaning up the pollution because the Penn Mine is situated in the reservoir's watershed, but EBMUD went to court in an effort to get the feds to foot the bill. EBMUD claimed the feds were responsible because they had effectively controlled the mine's production during World War II and the Korean conflict. The case dragged through the courts for almost two decades before a Washington D.C. District court judge rejected a final EBMUD appeal last year. Ultimately, EBMUD and the State Regional Water Quality Control Board split the $10 million remediation costs. The cleanup began in 1998 and the work is 95% done, according to EBMUD's Alex Coates. Workers hauled 350,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil to a nearby landfill, and EBMUD installed monitoring wells. The site has been graded and in mid-October it will be seeded with a special mixture of grasses designed to minimize erosion.. After things have been stabilized, the Army Corps of Engineers will revegetate the area with native shrubs and trees, at a cost of approximately $4.7 million. Beyond that, the agencies will continue to monitor water quality and erosion.

Coates is confident that there will be few, if any, problems with the project. "Things have been well staged to make sure it's successful."

Contact: EBMUD (510) 835-3000

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