http://www.rherald.com/news/2007/0503/Front_Page/f02.html

Omya Delays Dumping Experiment At Elizabeth Mine

Prompted by news reports in The Herald and elsewhere, community concern in Strafford has prompted the multi-national mining corporation, Omya, Inc., to delay a proposed pilot project to spread limestone-based waste at the Elizabeth Mine Superfund Site in South Strafford.

By Friday afternoon, a day after a Herald story publicized the proposal, Omya Vice President Jim Hamilton said the company had agreed to postpone the pilot program until 2008.

Just three days earlier, on Tuesday, Omya had submitted an application for a "Insignificant Waste Management Event" with the plans of moving the 200 tons of waste to Strafford in May,

The Elizabeth Mine Site is now part of a multi-year Superfund remediation effort, and the Omya waste has a similar effect to limestone in helping grass to grow on acidic soil.

Omya, as well as officials in the Superfund program and Vermontd Department of Environmental Conservation, hoped that applying the material on the 40-acre Elizabeth Mine tailings pile could be beneficial.

The company would like to find a reuse for the over 100,000 tons of waste produced annually. This chemically contaminated waste, which is currently a subject of a lawsuit by neighbors to the plant, would be around half the cost of limestone currently used to remediate the acidic conditions of the tailings at the Elizabeth Mine site in Strafford.

However, the fact that there were potential problems with Omya waste was not revealed to members of the Elizabeth Mine Community Advisory Board when the pilot project was mentioned at a March meeting. It was only after community technical advisors raised continued concerns that the story began to spread and officials at Omya and the state started having second thoughts about the pushing the project through for this summer.

A year’s delay will also be able to take advantage of a legislative-mandated study on Omya wastes and their effect on the environment which is currently being prepared. It is due to be submitted to the Vermont legislature by January 2008.

According to Annette Smith, executive director of Vermonters for a Clean Environment, it hardly made sense to start a pilot test using these wastes products in Strafford until this study was complete.

Smith, whose organization has questioned Omya practices over the last seven years, also claimed that it is questionable whether the waste qualifies under the "Insignificant Waste Management Event" permit.

May 10 Meeting

Smith will speak at Barrett Hall in South Strafford on Thursday May 10 at 7 p.m. about her organization’s experience with Omya. The presentation is entitled, "Omya and its Waste Products—What Strafford Needs to Know."

Smith will be joined by Michael Fannin, the board chair of Vermonters for a Clean Environment, and a neighbor to the Florence Plant.

The EPA has not yet set the date of the next EMCAG meeting at which the Omya issue will be on the agenda. The meeting is suppose to be sometime at the end of May.