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Science for Watershed Decisions on Abandoned Mine Lands: Review of Preliminary Results, Denver, Colorado, February 4-5, 1998

Introduction

Edited by David A. Nimick and Paul von Guerard

Numerous abandoned mine lands (AML) in the United States are on, or adjacent to, federally managed land, affect aquatic or wildlife habitat on Federal land, and will require investment of Federal resources to remediate. Although estimates of the amount of AML vary, there is general agreement that the scope of this problem is huge. In 1995, a U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) and U.S. Department of Agriculture interagency task force, including the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service (Federal land-management agencies), and the U.S. Geological Survey (the DOI science agency), developed a coordinated strategy for the cleanup of environmental contamination from abandoned mine lands (AML) associated with Federal lands. This strategy is based on a watershed approach (rather than a site-by-site approach) to characterize and remediate contamination. A watershed approach would identify those watersheds within a state that are most at risk for environmental degradation from AML, and then identify, characterize, and remediate contaminated sites that have the most profound effect on water and ecosystem quality within the watershed.

As part of the interagency effort, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has implemented an Abandoned Mine Lands Initiative to develop a strategy for gathering and communicating the scientific information needed to formulate effective and cost-efficient remediation of abandoned mine lands within the framework of a watershed approach. The combined interagency effort is being conducted in two pilot watersheds, the upper Animas River watershed in Colorado and the Boulder River watershed in Montana. These watersheds were selected by the interagency task force in cooperation with the States and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. USGS objectives include:

• estimating background (pre-mining) conditions;
• defining baseline (current) conditions;
• characterizing processes affecting contaminant dispersal and effects on ecosystem health; developing remediation goals; and
• transferring useful data and information to users in a timely and effective manner.

USGS expertise in water quality, hydrology, geology, geochemistry, biology, mapping, and digital-data collection and management is being applied in the pilot watersheds. Activities are being coordinated with stakeholders and Federal land-management agencies, which are coordinating design and implementation of remediation activities within these watersheds. The USGS Initiative will be conducted during 1997 through 2001, and lessons learned will be used in extension of the watershed approach to AML across the Nation.

This report provides an overview of the AML Initiative Year-One Workshop held in Denver, Colorado, on February 4-5, 1998. The objective of this workshop was to develop a dialogue among USGS scientists, Federal land-management agencies, other stakeholders, and regulatory agencies to identify the most useful scientific information and approaches for characterization of AML and to discuss use of this information within the context of a watershed approach to remediation. This report summarizes technical results of the first year of the USGS AML Initiative and includes abstracts for talks and posters presented at the workshop. Also included in this report is a paper that summarizes presentations given at the workshop by representatives of stakeholders, Federal land-management agencies, State regulatory agencies, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in a session titled "Perspectives on Implementing the Watershed Approach to Remediate Abandoned Mine Lands."

The watershed approach as presented by the interagency task force has four general components:

1. Statewide analysis and watershed prioritization — Information available at the state scale is used to prioritize watersheds for further study;
2. Watershed characterization — The extent, sources, and effects of contamination are characterized within a priority watershed; and this information is used to prioritize individual sites for remediation;
3. Site characterization in support of remediation — Detailed characterization of sites targeted for remediation is used to design and implement effective remedial measures and to define realistic remediation goals; and
4. Monitoring — Continued monitoring is implemented to measure indicators of improvement in watershed quality and effectiveness of remediation.

The watershed approach:

• gives high priority to actions likely to improve water and ecosystem quality most significantly,
• will greatly accelerate and reduce the total cost of remediation compared to remediating on a site-by-site basis,
• enables assessment of the cumulative effect of multiple and/or nonpoint sources of contamination,
• provides information that will assist watershed-scale disposal-siting decisions,
• enables consideration of revenue generation from selected sites to supplement overall watershed remediation costs, and
• fosters collaboration among Federal, State, and local levels of government and stakeholders.

During the first year of this initiative, USGS activities focused largely on component 2 of the watershed approach by conducting a watershed-scale characterization to identify sites that have a significant effect on watershed quality. However, some characterization activities were conducted at specific sites (component 3) where significant contamination already was evident. Although component 1 (statewide analysis and selection of the pilot watersheds) was accomplished previous to implementation of this initiative, USGS information used for the watershed selection process in Colorado and Montana and results of other national and statewide mapping activities were presented at the workshop and are included herein.

Additional information on the USGS Abandoned Mine Lands Initiative is available in Buxton and others (1997) and on the World Wide Web at http://amli.usgs.gov/. The USGS Mine Drainage Newsletter and information on the USGS Mine Drainage Interest Group is available at http://mine-drainage.usgs.gov/. Information about the activities and programs of the U.S. Geological Survey may be obtained at http://www.usgs.gov/.

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