National Media Screw-up of Leadville Flood Story Prompts Governmental Action

By M. John Fayhee

You can see where the good people of Leadville, Colorado, might have been a bit concerned when the news broke in February that there were about 1.5 billion gallons of extremely funky water backed up in an old, decaying tunnel above town that could at any moment inundate the city, sweeping women, children and pets toward a future that included forwarding addresses downriver in Buena Vista and Salida.

The fact that the news, as it was presented to the huddled masses on a state and national level, was a textbook example of both hyperbole and inaccuracy is beside the point. There is no denying that, east of Leadville — at 10,152 feet above sea level, the nation’s third-highest incorporated municipality — lies the Leadville Mine Drainage Tunnel — and, sure as hell, there’s an estimated 1.5 billion gallons of highly tainted water that’s been backing up in that tunnel for many years.

Now, it’s easy to get carried away when anything of substance starts getting measured in billions of anything. To make this a bit more palpable, it takes about 325,851 gallons to make an acre-foot of water, which is how reservoirs in the West are generally measured. Windy Gap Reservoir, between Granby, Colorado, and Hot Sulphur Springs, holds 445 acre-feet of water. So that means, let’s see here: 1.5 billion divided by 325,851 equals, well, 4,603, which further equals 10.3 Windy Gap Reservoirs coming down the mountain above Leadville if all hell broke loose.

And, if you want to start looking at this potential torrent the way a rafter or kayaker would, then hmmm, let’s see: Take that 1.5 billion gallons of pent-up water and divide it by 7.5, which is how many gallons there are in a cubic foot of water, and, boy howdy, that gives us a very respectable-sounding 200,000,000 cubic feet of heavy-metal-contaminated water backed up in the LMDT. 

But the chances of that water breaking free and sweeping Leadville away are pure hogwash. According to Lake County Commissioner Mike Hickman, the floodplain of the Arkansas River below Leadville is wide enough to handle that torrent. No, the only thing that would happen if the water contained within the LMDT suddenly spewed forth is that, well, one manufactured-home community right where the tunnel comes out would likely be thinking in terms of the wrath of god being unleashed upon them and their easily wash-away-able domiciles. That, and — oh yeah — what Hickman likens to an Exxon-Valdez level of seriously nasty pollution being unleashed into the headwaters of the most-commercially rafted river in the country, where it would likely cause a degree of ecological contamination that would not dissipate for perhaps 100 years.

And, oh yes, Leadville being in Colorado and all, there are inevitable concerns about the effect all this would have on local real estate values and tourism revenues.

Let’s back up a bit here.

According to Hickman, the LMDT was constructed in the early-1940s to drain tunnels that were dug to mine various minerals that were needed to stoke the war machine. A discharge treatment plant was constructed at the bottom of the tunnel — as a matter of fact, very close to the aforementioned manufactured home community. After the Korean War, the tunnel was abandoned, and, since then, the SNAFU acronym has been in full operational mode. Several years ago, the federal Bureau of Reclamation, which operates the treatment plant servicing the LMDT discharge, began noticing that the volume of water making its way from the LMDT was decreasing. Since there was no way that less water would be draining into the tunnel, there was only one explanation: There was some tunnel constipation going on. An investigation revealed that, sho nuff, physical decay within the tunnel was resulting in a blockage of the water that had previously run unimpeded downhill toward the existing treatment plant. What that situation ultimately portended was anyone’s guess. But none of the worst-case scenarios, according to Hickman, are good.

“The tunnel began to collapse 10 years ago, and, [as of mid-April], the dam holding the water in was 188 feet high,” Hickman said. “That dam is increasing in size about 12 feet per year. There is no way to tell at what point it will break, releasing all the water that is now backed up behind the blockage.”

In a letter to the Bureau of Reclamation sent in Nov. 2007, the Environmental Protection Agency stated unambiguously: “Due to the unknown condition of the tunnel blockage and the large volume of water behind the blockages, we are concerned that an uncontrolled, potentially catastrophic release of water into the Arkansas River … is likely at some point.”

On Feb. 1, 2008, the Lake County Commissioners declared a bona fide emergency.

“Some of the tourism and real estate people were not too happy,” Hickman told me. “There were some examples of potential home buyers backing out of their contracts after the emergency was declared, and some of our winter events had drop-offs in attendance. But, they would be less happy if all the water broke loose and we did not have a plan, and, to have a plan, we needed to declare an emergency.”

Because of that declaration, several balls got simultaneously moving. Emergency plans were devised and coordinated with various agencies. To everyone’s relief (right), FEMA became part of the dialogue. And the Leadville City Council wisely opted to enter into the federal flood insurance plan. But the main thing that happened was that the national media got hold of the story (“Colorado towns fears avalanche of water,” screamed one Associated Press story that was disseminated through Yahoo.com), and managed to screw it up just enough to have a backwards-assed positive effect.

“I was getting ready to be interviewed by National Public Radio,” Hickman said. “During the prep interview, I was asked just how many people were trapped in the flooded tunnel. They didn’t seem to want to believe me when I told them that there were no people trapped in the tunnel, and, when I finally convinced them, they seemed disappointed. This story was all over the country, and, in almost every circumstance, the media managed to exaggerate it or get it wrong. They made it seem like Leadville was on the verge of getting washed away.”

The fact that the story had been picked up and blown out of proportion by the national media had the curious effect of galvanizing previously inert (and suddenly red-faced) state and federal-level governmental forces, which seemed a bit chagrined by the negative media fallout descending upon the Colorado High Country. As of press time, several million dollars’ worth of state and federal money had been allocated for drilling relief shafts that would then funnel the backed-up water down to the treatment plant. The main drilling was scheduled to have taken place May 15 — between the time these words were written and press time, so we don’t actually know what transpired (for all we know, Leadville actually did get washed away) — but, Hickman said, near-record snowfall may delay those drilling efforts till June.

Worse than the quantity of water backed up in the LMDT, according to Hickman, would be the quality of the discharge.

“This is some of the most-toxic water you can imagine,” he says. “It could be the single worst environmental disaster in the history of Colorado, maybe even the whole West. This would be an inland version of the Exxon Valdez spill. That water is so polluted with heavy metals, it could kill the Arkansas River and everything in it for more than 100 years.”

Wonder how the real estate and tourism industries in Leadville would spin that.