In commemoration of City Weekly's 40th anniversary, we are digging into our archives to celebrate. Each week, we FLASHBACK to a story or column from our past in honor of four decades of local alt-journalism. Whether the names and issues are familiar or new, we are grateful to have this unique newspaper to contain them all.
Title: Toxic Sister Sharon
Author: Lance Gurwell
Date: May 26, 1989
Midvale, Utah - Officials and residents of this small town just south of Salt Lake City say they're concerned about a 14 million ton toxic tailings pile in the middle of town, and health concerns aside, say the tailings and an old mill are ruining its chances at economic development.
Cadmium, lead, arsenic, copper, zinc and chromium are among the toxic materials the Environmental Protection Agency has identified in the tailings, and while the 1,200 acre site is on the agency's Superfund list, EPA officials say there is no imminent danger to residents who at times are exposed to swirling dust storms from the abandoned mill.
Some of the 12,000 residents of Midvale—Utah's second-oldest city—say they're tired of waiting for the EPA to do something about the eyesore.
"I've been living here 57 years and I haven't experienced any health problems," says Jim Landers, a printer. "I played on the tailings piles as a kid. I'm not worried about health problems—you might have some if you eat a tablespoon a day, but who's going to do that?" he asks.
"But the EPA is dragging its feet on the issue and its holding back our development," Landers adds.
The site is one of about 35 locations in the Mountain West on the EPA's National Priorities List—better known as the Superfund.
A chain-link fence surrounds the 1,200 acre plant site and its huge toxic tailings piles. Signs in several languages warn of danger. The crumbling Sharon Steel mill has been closed since 1971, but remains a mute monument to the city's former glory years.
In the early 1900s the plant was said to be the nation's second-largest producer of zinc, lead and copper. Even then the plant was producing pollutants and a federal lawsuit filed over the smoke and sulfur oxide from it and three other smelters in the neighborhood brought large-scale ore production to an end.
Sharon Steel purchased the plant from U.S. Smelting, Refining and Mining Co. in 1979 and in 1982 tests revealed elevated levels of lead, a hazardous element.
Now, more than eight decades after the first lawsuit, new litigation is underway between the EPA and the site's owners and the toxic waste remains to be removed—or treated in some other way to reduce dust and possible water contamination.
Not only is the waste a health hazard, it's slowing or preventing economic development in the town, claims Mayor Everett Dahl.
"The biggest problem we have is cleaning up our hazardous waste," said Dahl. But he wonders when, or if, it will happen. "The EPA was supposed to give us a remedy—to haul it away or forget about it—in April."
But that meeting was rescheduled and will now be held sometime in June, says Sam Vance, Denver-based project manager of the site for the EPA.
The EPA is anxious to move ahead on whatever action is deemed appropriate, Vance says, and is holding meetings with "potentially responsible parties. The EPA filed suit in U.S. District Court in February, asking that Sharon Steel Corp. and seven other companies be held legally and financially responsible for health and environmental problems," says Vance.
A spokesperson for Denver-based Sharon Steel and Natural Resources couldn't be reached for comment.
"The first of three phases of the EPA's work on the site is complete," Vance says.
"We've determined that the tailings pose health hazards," Vance said in a telephone interview. "There is a real risk, but it's not an immediate, acute health risk.
"Any risk would be greater to children, although it's not known how great that risk is," Vance says.
But the risk is great enough that an effort has been made to keep Asian immigrants from planting vegetable gardens on the site. One of the city's concerns, the mayor says, is "Vietnamese eating carrots out of our arsenic fields."
In phase two of the EPA study, a variety of ways to deal with the tailings will be examined.
Possible methods would be to haul the materials to a remote dump site in Tooele County; to find some method to stabilize them in place. Another suggestion is to transport the waste via a slurry pipeline to the Tooele site, where a few years ago hazardous wastes from the former Vitro Chemical Co. site near Salt Lake City were taken. That was a three-year job that cost about $50 million. The tailings and slag heaps at the Sharon Steel location comprise about 10 times as much waste.
Whatever the solution, it's going to be expensive.
Costs to remove the tailings range from about $1 billion to $1.9 billion, depending on what method is selected. The EPA estimates it would cost $16 million and take three years to stabilize the material on-site.
"It would seem that they (EPA) have been just dragging their feet," Rep. Jed Wasden, R-Midvale, told a reporter. "I guess funding has been the real problem."
[Another quinquennial review of the site is estimated to be performed by the EPA between Aug. and Oct. 2024. —Eds.]
