LEADVILLE: THE STRUGGLE TO REVIVE AN AMERICAN TOWN
By Gillian Klucas, Island Press, 2004, 304 pagesFair question: Who would think that a blow-by-blow, sometimes seemingly day-by-day account of a small Colorado town’s problems in cleaning up an environmental mess would make good reading? Oh, right. Maybe the mayor of said town, or an EPA administrator with time on his hands. In point of fact, Gillian Klucas’ “Leadville: The Struggle to Revive an American Town,” the tale of the 20-year saga to clean up a century’s worth of mining mess in Leadville, Colo., makes very good reading indeed.
The story itself is fairly simple. Leadville, the highest incorporated town in the United States, sits on the Continental Divide in the Rockies, a virtual lump of coal’s throw away from fancier sites like Breckenridge, Vail and Aspen. Unlike those spots, however, Leadville’s claim to fame is in its name: By the 1880’s, the silver, gold and lead deposits in the surrounding scenic California Gultch made Leadville the leading mining town in the country. While the town’s fortunes rose and fell with the price of gold and silver, the discovery of copper, lead and zinc kept Leadville from going bust. Over the course of a century, Klucas reports, nearly a billion dollars worth of minerals went out of Leadville.
But competition and the vagaries of world consumption meant that by the 1970’s, only one major mine was left operating in Leadville, employing about 200 people. What remained was an environmental legacy: hundreds of underground tunnels and mine shafts, piles of slag and waste rock, and acid mine waste that drained into the groundwater and, ultimately, into the Arkansas River, which periodically ran red with toxic waste. Leadville was an obvious case for a major cleanup.
Or so one might think, as the EPA did, in deciding in the early 1980’s that Leadville was eligible for Superfund status. But here’s where the story gets interesting, because nothing is obvious or simple about Leadville and its proud and opinionated inhabitants. This was a town that literally owed its existence to the mining industry and despite the fact that by the 1980’s most of the mining companies had snatched their fortunes and run, the citizens of Leadville were not anxious to bite the proverbial feeding hand. Moreover, they were (and are) products of their harsh environment: tough, independent, proud — and not about to be told what to do by a bunch of out-of-town government bureaucrats.
And so the drama emerges, as the players take their places. Many townspeople dream that the mining industry will revive; many believe that tourism will save their economy; most think that being designated a Superfund site will jinx either possibility. They find the notion that their town needs cleaning up insulting. And they certainly don’t want anyone digging up their backyards to test for toxins — what will that do to their already plummeting house values? The mining companies — many of them evolved into completely new entities — don’t want to admit to wrongdoing, or pay to undo work that was legal at the time. Some small land owners who thought they owned a piece of Heaven for retirement stand to be financially ruined. And then there are those hapless EPA case managers who arrive wet-eared and innocent, armed with the conviction that they’re doing the right thing — until they face their first town meeting.
It’s a wonderful tale of mostly good people trying to do what they think is the right thing. Through it all, Klucas weaves details of history, geology and government policy while populating the story with characters from all sides, whose background, personality and motivations she lays out with the precision and eye of a good novelist. Thus we meet — and have sympathy for — a wide range of players. Doc Smith, who has watched the cattle suffer and the fish die in the river on the ranch he inherited from his father. Jim Martin, long-time Leadville resident and a loyal employee of the mining company Climax, where he has earned good money while working his way up the company ladder. U.S. District Court Judge Jim Carrigan, whose job it will be to define the law as applied to Superfund. EPA project manager Ken Wangerud, who arrives in Leadville a “starry eyed scientist” and whose eyesight is quickly adjusted.
And while introducing us to scores of colorful characters, Leadville’s story gives rise to a host of complex questions surrounding privacy, identity, culture, culpability, preservation, public safety and public health. Be forewarned: the “Epilogue” in “Leadville” is not neat and tidy. Like all communities, Leadville is a work in progress. In an era of increasingly polarized thinking, “Leadville” is a fascinating morality tale, one which carries this message: Understanding that no contemporary problems are simple is the first step toward reaching workable solutions.
A former newspaper journalist, Judy Linscott is a free-lance writer who makes her home in central Connecticut.
