 Costs for New World Mine waste removal vary by plan By JOE KOLMAN Gazette Bozeman Bureau BOZEMAN - The first phase of an eight-year cleanup of the New World Mining District near Cooke City will cost between $344,000 and $649,000, according to a report issued earlier this month.
The cleanup is part of an agreement that the federal government signed in 1996 with Crown Butte Mining Inc. to buy the company's holdings in the historic mining district. Included in the deal was $22.5 million for land reclamation and waste removal. Public comment on the plan will be taken by government officials today from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. at an open house in Gardiner's Best Western Motel conference room. The first mine waste pile scheduled for removal is the multicolor dump located at the McLaren Pit in the Daisy Creek drainage. Other projects scheduled for completion this year are the upper and middle Tredennic dumps on the south side of Scotch Bonnet Mountain and three smaller dumps in the vicinity of Lulu Pass and the Como Basin. About 5,000 cubic yards of waste are contained in those dumps. Officials are investigating the possibility of an on-site repository for the waste. Also included in plans for this year are improved surface water diversions around the Como shaft in order to decrease flows into and through the Glengarry adit. The three repository alternatives vary in effectiveness and cost, the report said. Alternative A would includes cover soil planted with vegetation that would encourage uptake of infiltrating water. It would leave some risk to the environment, and would cost $49,000. Alternative C would add a bottom liner and leachate collection system that would collect leachate generated by the waste and route it to a storage tank. It would cost about $213,000 and would pose little environmental risk, the report said. But, the report says, Alternative B could be implemented for about $100,000 and would give the same level of protection as Alternative C. That option would add a geosynthetic clay liner to the soil cap to create a barrier to infiltration of water into the waste. Also included in the total cost estimates are waste removal, engineering design, construction oversight and post-removal site control.
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