Kennecott urged to keep cleaning
Court motions filed for company to stay on groundwater job
"We're not saying that Kennecott is not going to do it," said Doug Bacon, an environmental scientist who oversees certain Kennecott cleanup projects for the Utah Department of Environmental Quality.
Bacon said that, since 1996, there have been significant improvements in what he described as the acid portion — the two square miles — of what is actually a larger plume dubbed Zone A, located near Herriman, South Jordan, West Jordan and Copperton. Kennecott has three wells tapped into the acid portion, drawing polluted water out, putting it in its north tailings pond and letting nature slowly "flush" the area of contamination.
"We have seen the plume reduced," Bacon said. "But it's going to take time."
At the very least, that means decades, with no best-case scenario offered by the state.
For a look at the plume, which is under land owned by Kennecott, and a second plume of contaminated groundwater underneath a more developed area of the southwest part of the Salt Lake Valley, visit the DEQ Web link.
Bacon said no residential drinking water supplies have been impacted by the acid portion of Zone A, and that, to his knowledge, no one has been using water from the acid portion for irrigation.
The documents filed Thursday include a motion in U.S. District Court to approve a consent decree filed last year by state and federal agencies interested in seeing Kennecott clean up the groundwater. The other document is a detailed 55-page memorandum, in support of the motion, filed by the Utah attorney general and U.S. Department of Justice on behalf of the state DEQ and the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
Bacon said the main thing people need to understand about the filings is that they're intended to ensure remedies already in place will continue to be implemented in years to come, that Kennecott will pay for the cleanup and that the company will face penalties if the work isn't completed.
So far, Kennecott has been asked to pay the EPA $5 million and provide financial "assurance" for $15 million to be spent on cleanup. Both of Thursday's court documents refer only to cleaning up the acid portion of the Zone A plume.
In the meantime, if Kennecott continues with its plans to develop land on the west side of the valley, Bacon said no one will be able to drill into the acid portion of the Zone A plume for drinking water until the groundwater meets state and federal standards for human consumption.
E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com
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