Environmental Contaminants Cleanup of Hazardous Waste

Cleanup of Historical Smelter Impacts, Phelps Dodge Chino Copper Mine, Hurley, New Mexico

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Southwest New Mexico is home to some of the largest open-pit copper mines in the Country. Historically, copper ore was sent to the Hurley Smelter for processing. Years of unregulated emissions from the Hurley smelter contaminated a ~55 square mile downwind area with copper, other metals, and low pH. In order to defer inclusion of the site on U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Superfund National Priority List (NPL), Chino Mines Company entered into an Administrative Order on Consent (AOC) with the New Mexico Environment Department to perform a “Superfund-like” cleanup. As part of EPA oversight of the case, EPA and the State enlisted the help of Environmental Contaminants Specialists at the New Mexico Ecological Services Field Office. Our involvement helped make the ecological risk assessment for the site a model for hard-rock mines throughout the Southwest. Through a combination of sophisticated risk modeling, supported by vegetation, small mammal, bird, and reptile sampling results, the environmental cleanup of this site will consider by risk to small ground-feeding birds. Typically, the focus of hard-rock mine cleanup in the Western U.S. has been on the protection of sensitive aquatic resources. Terrestrial resources have received less attention, often because little was known about the impacts of metals to strictly terrestrial species. The ecological risk assessment for this terrestrial site highlights the potential ecological risk of hard-rock mines in the arid Southwest, and recognizes the importance of mine cleanup in the protection of a highly unique and diverse migratory bird population.

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