[CPEO-BIF] Battle Mountain, Eagle Valley, Colorado

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Superfund site's ritzy plan a gold mine or a minefield?

By Steve Lipsher
Denver Post
January 25, 2007

Minturn - In many ways, Bobby Ginn's proposal to build 1,700 upscale 
homes and condominiums just around the corner from Vail ski area looks 
like so many other mega-developments in the Eagle Valley.

But the key difference is that the Florida developer hopes to attract 
the super-wealthy to land so contaminated with mining waste that it 
landed on the Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund list of the 
nation's most- polluted properties.

Ginn's ambitious $3.4 billion Battle Mountain project calls for a 
private ski area, golf course and five housing subdivisions, ranging 
from multimillion- dollar slopeside homes to employee condominiums 
slated for the abandoned mining town of Gilman.

Set on 5,300 acres that include the contaminated Eagle Mine, waste-rock 
piles that leach poisonous runoff into the Eagle River and other sources 
of heavy metals from arsenic to zinc, the project is being touted as the 
best way to clean up the environmental catastrophe.

"The development is the remedy for this site," Ken Waesche, an 
environmental consultant for the Ginn Co., told members of the town's 
planning and zoning commission Wednesday night.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_5089809

--


Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org


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