DEWEY-HUMBOLDT, AZ — For decades, those who call Dewey-Humboldt home have lived with the possibility of toxic contamination in their yards and water.
The former Iron King Mine and the Humboldt Smelter operated from the late 1800s until the 50s and 60s.
Those operations left behind high levels of dangerous heavy metals like arsenic, lead and others that could have serious consequences on people’s health.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) designated the former Iron King Mine and the Humboldt Smelter as a superfund site in 2008.
“While the mine and the smelter were in operation for decades, there were contaminants, metals and contaminants that did blow or smokestacks that did deposit in people's yards,” EPA Remedial Project Manager Anne Lawrence said.
Lawrence said the EPA has also tested groundwater.
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“The impacts, if there are any from the mine, tend to be located near the mine and the smelter. There are background levels of arsenic in the water,” Lawrence said.
While the EPA previously tested and cleaned up a few dozen contaminated properties in 2017, they’re back out with a goal of testing 305 properties this year and remediating any that come back with high levels of heavy metals.
As of Thursday, Lawrence’s team has sampled 86 properties. However, she said only half of the requested properties have granted access to the EPA to collect samples.
“We appreciate them because we cannot do the work without having the property owners give us consent for access,” Lawrence said. “The goal of the sampling is to develop a cleanup design for each property.”
Bruce Alan Woodhall can see the contaminated waste from the smelter site from his front porch. Part of his property was remediated years ago. Now, it’s been tested again.
“How did this happen?” Woodhall asked. “How did we end up heading towards 20 years? We're in two decades of the EPA Superfund, $40 million and whatever it's been, to do what?”
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The EPA said it put a temporary spray mortar “Posi-Shell” over the top of the smelter site in 2019.
Still, Woodhall worries about what he seen picked up by the wind.
“I saw a big dust devil come through there, hit the tailings pile, make a mini orange tornado, then take a sharp left turn and head to that hillside,” Woodhall said.
While residential clean-up continues, the EPA is finalizing a master design to clean the former mine and smelter sites, moving them both to permanent containment areas, all the while controlling contaminated dust and water during that process.
“It has taken some time and we acknowledge that,” EPA Manager of Arizona Superfund Site Program Michelle Rogow said. “We are at a critical juncture right now… We are here to collect additional information on residential properties so that we can move this cleanup forward.”
It’s a project now estimated to be well over $100 million.
ABC15 heard from more than a dozen residents about their health concerns, housing woes, and frustration over a nearly two-decade wait to get things cleaned up.
ABC is listening and will share their stories in the days to come.
The EPA set up a website with more information on the residential remediation and large superfund site cleanup efforts online here.
