“Disentangling Local Knowledge: Debates Over EPA Superfund Projects in US West Mining Communities, 1978-2001”

• In Event: Mining for the Future: Communities of Extraction Seeking Hope in Their Pasts

Abstract

“Is it necessary to address the wastes left in the wake of decades of mining?” Since the 1980s, this question has preoccupied residents in mining towns across the United States due in large part to the creation of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (aka “Superfund”). Proponents of this act argued that cleaning up industrial waste sites is necessary, though some Americans opposed its expense and extent. Although mining town residents had long known the dangers of mining and milling labor, they were less aware of potential health problems associated with mine waste. When Environmental Protection Agency officials identified these potential dangers in Globe, Arizona, and Leadville, Colorado, during the 1980s, local response to the proposed cleanup varied. Some residents—particularly those who lived on or near the Superfund sites—accepted these claims and supported the EPA’s cleanup plans. Other residents—some who lived on or near contamination, others who lived further away—rejected the EPA’s data. The EPA could not show definitively that the local contamination had caused local deaths, so some residents persisted with what they knew from living in the area for decades: no one was dying of exposure to mine waste. Instead, they believed that cleanup was unnecessary and would only damage their local economy by stigmatizing the town. To them, that was the true danger.

These cases from Globe and Leadville demonstrate that environmental cleanup only progressed beyond debates over reliable data when they addressed local health and economic concerns. Moreover, the individual government officials and residents who have led successful cleanup projects have been the ones who recognized the nuances of knowledge and worked with those nuances. These individuals, therefore, can provide a template for cleanup projects at other toxic sites across the nation.

Author

• Nichelle Frank, Utah State University