Exchanges and information arising from the Draft Soils and Overburden Business Meeting Minutes:
Potential Soils and Overburden Topics for the 2016 Spokane, Washington meeting.
From Dennis Neuman
- reclamation of abandoned hard rock mines in the western U.S. and Canada;
- remediation of contaminated soils at mega-Superfund sites.
- Getting the Canadians and research scientists from Alaska would be great.
Stuart Jennings suggested
Northern Idaho is the subject of a very large scale mine cleanup related to historic lead and zinc mine wastes. For example: restorationpartnership.org , yosemite.epa.gov .
I believe total cleanup costs may reach $1B. There are many soil contamination issues: repository construction, residential yard cleanup, smelter fallout, riparian mine waste, food chain bioaccumulation of Pb and Zn, sediments… There are many experts working on this cleanup that could contribute papers or be involved in ASRS.
A colleague of mine with BLM (Jeff Johnson) is the federal restoration coordinator so he knows all the players. I'm sure he would be able to help identify some good speakers… I conducted a soil bioengineering training for the Forest Service (with Len) in Coeur d-Alene (30 minutes east of Spokane) and we used several excellent soil/revegetation field sites for tours during that week…
For example: spokesman.com I've been to this site multiple times and it is a great story that would make a great presentation.