Under a consent decree filed Monday in U.S. District Court, Kennecott will dedicate $20 million for work that began 15 years ago and is expected to continue for another four decades. The company must also halt further contamination from mining operations and clean up fouled drinking water in South Jordan, West Jordan, Riverton and Herriman.
"Kennecott has been doing what it agreed to do," said Utah Department of Environmental Quality spokeswoman Donna Kemp Spangler. "This puts it in writing."
The new money will augment more than $62 million already dedicated to two reverse-osmosis water-treatment plants and any other remedies to provide clean water to the Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District.
Kennecott operates its immense open pit Bingham Canyon Mine in the Oquirrh Mountains about 30 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. Acidic waste water that leached from tailings piles and other mining wastewater contaminated a two-square-mile plume with high concentrations of sulfates and heavy metals and affected a total area of 20 square miles.
In 1995, the state and Kennecott settled a lawsuit over damage to the groundwater. That consent decree ordered the mining company to pay the state $9 million in cash for damages and to set up a $28 million trust fund for water treatment.
By then, Kennecott had begun cleaning up the pollution according to negotiations with the state Department of Environmental Quality, said DEQ attorney Denise Chancellor.
The state put its $9 million in the trust fund, which by 2004 had grown to $62.5 million. That year, the state approved a joint proposal from Kennecott and the water district to build the reverse-osmosis plants to treat the water going to the four affected cities. One plant already is operating, the other is under construction.
Monday's decree resulted from a separate U.S. Environmental Protection Agency action against Kennecott under a 1980 federal law that identifies Superfund cleanup sites. The decree orders Kennecott to provide $15 million to pay for continued work on barriers and pumps that should both halt any new pollution and clean up the remainder. Kennecott also must pay the EPA $5 million for its costs.
"People who live near or around this area deserve to know that everything possible is being done to make sure the water is clean and that the area will not be recontaminated," Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said in a statement.
A copy of the consent decree and details and deadlines for public comment are available at www.deq.utah.gov/Issues/nrd/index.htm.
