From Slag Heap to Housing Development
None by KCPW
Clean-up is Complete on Old Smelter in Midvale
SL County Mayor Peter Corroon congratulates Midvale Mayor JoAnn Seghini on clean-up of the old Bingham Canyon Smelter.
"What you see are rolling hills with potential," says Midvale Mayor JoAnn Seghini. "What you'd see before was slag, trash and scrub brush."
Midvale Mayor Joann Seghini remembers tasting copper on her tongue during overcast days as a child growing up in the area. The Bingham Canyon Smelter site sat vacant for more than 20 years, covered in piles of toxic slag. Finally, a settlement with the former landowners and a partnership with state and federal environmental officials fast-tracked the clean-up.
The EPA has now certified the site clean. Utah Department of Environmental Quality Division Director Brad Johnson says crews buried the slag under clean topsoil:
"Ideally, we would like to see everything hauled away to some isolated repository and managed that way. But it's not uncommon for that to be cost prohibitive," Johnson. "We took the next best option - to bury it on site and cap it. That way if someone is going to build something here and have to dig down into that, they'll know what's there and plan to handle it appropriately."
Midvale City has agreed to spend redevelopment agency money helping an as-yet-unnamed developer build housing, office space and retail on the 220-acre site.
Email to a friendPosted in KCPW Newsroom. Copyright 2009 KCPW
1. Raymond Takashi Swenson said:
It is nice to see the Midvale "slag" site undergoing development. It was established 10 years ago, when I worked for the owners, that the main source of contamination on the site was waste generated from the production of arsenic for the Federal government during World War II. It took a decade for the Federal government to assume even part of the financial responsibility for cleanup. The lead and arsenic that is locked into the slag itself is not especially dangerous. Before it was declared a Superfund site, the slag was used by the Utah Highway Department as roadbed material under many of the roads in Utah, and it sits under the ties of many Utah railroads. You would have to grind up the slag and eat it to get any toxic effects. Down underneath clean dirt and layers of asphalt parking lots and concrete building foundations, it will not harm anyone. Much more potentially toxic substances in Denver have been safely isolated underneath the Eilitch's Amusement Park, with EPA's blessing. Like the old Murray Smelter Site, this is what "Brownfield" development is all about, turning contaminated land into useful (and taxable) land.
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