Open Cut reclamation work finished

By Bill Harlan, Journal Staff Writer | Thursday, May 04, 2006

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LEAD — With reclamation complete, the state Board of Minerals and Environment has approved a $110 million plan to keep the Open Cut surface mine in Lead environmentally safe for at least the next century.

Homestake Mining Co. stopped mining the big pit in 1998. Homestake’s underground gold mine closed three years later.

The Open Cut has been a landmark in Lead for decades, and it will remain a draw for sightseers — a hole 800 feet deep and a half-mile wide, with spectacular cliffs on the east and west sides.

Homestake owner Barrick Gold has completed reclamation on 516 acres that includes the Open Cut itself and two large waste-rock dumps. Another 108 acres near the Open Cut will be reclaimed during the next three years.

Barrick and the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources negotiated a post-closing plan for the 516 acres that includes treating runoff from the waste-rock piles in perpetuity. The runoff exceeds water-quality standards for selenium and dissolved solids, DENR engineering director Mike Cepak said.

Homestake has nearly completed a wastewater-treatment plant in Central City, between Lead and Deadwood, which will be the centerpiece of the post-reclamation plan.

Barrick also agreed to control erosion and weeds at the waste-rock dumps and to re-plant vegetation as necessary.

The post-reclamation plan covers the next 100 years, Cepak said.

Barrick agreed to post a $38.22 million bond that, with interest, will pay for the $110 million plan. The cost of the plan includes estimated inflation, but Cepak said the state and Barrick would recalculate the bond every five years to make sure it is adequate.

The Board of Minerals and Environment approved the plan last month, but Cepak said the “paper work” had not been completed and signed. In the meantime, there has been a mudslide at the Open Cut. “We did send board members a memo explaining the slide,” Cepak said.

The Board of Minerals and Environment meets May 18, but Cepak said the slide, caused by recent heavy snowfall, is not likely to affect the post-reclamation plan.

The slide was, however, on the same side of the Open Cut as the site of Homestake’s former Washington Street Electrical Building, which was built in 1911 as a power plant. During a cleanup, Homestake discovered polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, in the building. PCBs can cause cancer. Most of the contamination was removed to an out-of-state landfill, but traces of PCBs remained in the concrete.

Lawrence County issued a permit to collapse the electrical building into its own deep basement and cap it with asphalt. The EPA and the state DENR approved the plan, and DENR spokesman Kim Smith said the slide did not threaten the small landfill.

Reclamation of the Open Cut is a milestone for Homestake and for the gold rush that led to the founding of Lead and Deadwood.

Fred and Moses Manual and their partner, Hank Harney, located the original Homestake claim on April 9, 1876, not far from Homestake’s new water-treatment plant in Central City. A year later, George Hearst of San Francisco bought the claim for $70,000. The Homestake gold mine operated nearly continuously for the next 125 years. Barrick bought Homestake Mining Co. just in time to close the mine in Lead.

Part of the underground gold mine is beneath the Open Cut, but the Homestake outcropping of ore — called a “lead” — plunges underground to the south.

The Homestake visitor’s center on the south edge of the cut offers views of the pit.

Contact Bill Harlan at 394-8424 or bill.harlan@rapidcityjournal.com