Inside Leadville’s California Gulch Milling Proposal Debate
- Trisha Sannappanavar
- 4 days ago
- 9 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
The Restored Lands Advocate
A milling company’s permit application proposes to reprocess historic mine waste in Leadville's California Gulch Superfund site and is drawing opposition from residents and environmental groups.
LEADVILLE, Colo. — As the town is looking to refine their mine waste legislation, residents like Craig Gooch are concerned about this new application but not completely against the industry. “We’re not against mining or industrial activities at all,” said Craig Gooch, who is also a member of Concerned Citizens of Lake County (CC4LC). “We just want it to be responsible.”
That distinction between mining and responsible mining sits at the center of a permit dispute that has divided this historic Colorado mountain town over a proposal to reprocess decades-old mine waste within one of the country’s Superfund sites.
The federal government intervened in 1983, designating an 18-square-mile area around Leadville as the California Gulch Superfund Site—a classification reserved for the nation’s most contaminated locations.The designation followed decades of toxic drainage from more than a century of mining operations, which contaminated California Gulch and severely degraded stretches of the upper Arkansas River—dramatically reducing fish populations and making portions of the watershed inhospitable to much aquatic life.
Today, the cleanup is now more than 90% complete.
Because of this, in 2014, Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) was able to designate 102 miles of the Arkansas River as Gold Medal Waters—the longest such stretch in the state. Anglers, rafters, and aquatic life now all benefit from a river that was once ecologically lifeless due to industry impact just a few decades ago. However, in 2026, a proposed milling operation in the heart of the Superfund zone is raising fundamental questions about who bears environmental risk.
What the California Gulch Milling Proposal Details
CJK Milling Company, LLC, along with its operator Union Milling, has applied to the Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety (DRMS) to process up to 400 tons per day of old mine tailings. That is the rocky debris left behind by nearly 130 years of gold, silver and lead extraction that ended in 1986.
The company suggests trucking material from waste piles on Leadville’s east side—part of a network of roughly 2,000 legacy piles scattered across Lake County—down through the edge of town to a permitted mill site. This site is situated within California Gulch, the same tributary whose contamination initially triggered federal action in 1983.
From there, the material would be processed using established extraction techniques, with the resulting filtered tailings stored in a lined tailings facility on-site. This special facility is a containment system using synthetic geomembranes, such as polyethylene, to line the ground and prevent contamination of surrounding soils and groundwater. However, this attempt at ‘safe storage’ is still located in a sensitive area, leaving residents on edge if containment could not be held. The project, as proposed, would span approximately a decade and remove around 550,000 tons of material.
Proponents are framing the situation as a win-win: private capital performing environmental cleanup while recovering commercially valuable metals. Gold prices reached record highs in 2024, and federal policy has increasingly emphasized domestic recovery of critical minerals, giving projects like this renewed financial viability.
“Reprocessing removes contamination at its source, helps protect the watershed, reduces reliance on perpetual water treatment, supports responsible resource recovery, and can return land to productive use,” said Linda Kiefer, an EPA official overseeing the California Gulch site, in a written statement provided for this article.
What the EPA Actually Approved
The company has repeatedly described itself as operating with EPA approval, a claim that has generated considerable confusion among regulators, residents and local officials.
In November 2025, the EPA issued a “property status letter” to CJK stating it found “no apparent inconsistency” between the proposed operations and the existing Superfund remedy. The letter also advised the company to obtain all required approvals from state and local agencies and cautioned against any activity that could interfere with ongoing remedial efforts.
That letter, EPA officials clarified, is not a permit.
“EPA approval is not required for legally permitted mining activities within Superfund site boundaries,” said CDPHE’s Kyle Sandor, who has worked on the California Gulch cleanup. “The EPA and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) have not explicitly stated support for mine waste reprocessing as a remedial action alternative.”
The actual permitting authority rests with DRMS. The EPA's role, Sandor said, is advisory—providing input on site conditions and potential environmental impacts while deferring to state regulators on final decisions.
Opponents of the project say the distinction matters enormously. “The applicant has not produced any written EPA approval of this project,” reads a formal objection filed by the law firm Burns, Figa & Will on behalf of a group of local residents of CC4LC. “We seriously doubt that EPA has reviewed, much less ‘accepted,’ the cyanide milling plan proposed by the applicant.”
While EPA approval is not legally required for the project to proceed, opponents argue that the company’s letter has misled the public to believe it has a level of federal endorsement it does not actually have.
Timeline of the Permit
This is not CJK’s first attempt at permitting. According to Gooch, the company has filed and withdrawn its application at least three previous times.
“Each time, they’ve withdrawn because the applications have been so inadequate in terms of fulfilling the issues that DRMS raised,” Gooch said in an interview.
The most recent California Gulch milling proposal, submitted at the end of December, prompted DRMS to send back a detailed technical response identifying approximately 85 outstanding items requiring clarification or documentation. CJK subsequently requested and received multiple extensions on its response deadline. As of publication, the decision timeline has been pushed from April to June of 2026, and could be extended further.
The formal objections filed by area residents, represented by legal counsel, cite a pattern of inadequacy in the company’s submissions. Among the concerns is that the company has described its processing approach using only a “line diagram” rather than engineer-stamped drawings and specifications. It has deferred key safety details to “future documents.” And on multiple points, it has asked regulators to evaluate compliance without providing the criteria by which compliance could actually be measured.
“An applicant that cannot produce a complete and coherent application should not be trusted to operate a cyanide milling and disposal operation,” CC4LC’s objection states.
The Equation of Water in This Issue
One of the most contested elements of this work involves cyanide use, a chemical commonly used in precious metals processing that, in even small concentrations, poses serious risks to groundwater.
A previous version of the application proposed using sodium cyanide vat leaching as the primary extraction method. Though that proposal has since been revised, residents and legal representatives remain concerned about residual cyanide levels in the disposal pit.
While the company claims it will detoxify any cyanide before disposal, it has not provided engineering specifications for how that process will be managed. More troubling, the formal objection argues what the company itself has acknowledged: cyanide will be present in the disposal pit at approximately one part per million, a concentration five times above the state groundwater standard and approximately 67 times above the EPA’s protection screening level.
The mill site sits approximately 1.3 miles from the Arkansas River, on a tributary that flows directly toward the watershed the Superfund cleanup spent decades restoring.
Beyond chemical risk, there is also a basic supply problem: the company has not secured a confirmed water source for operations. Processing 400 tons of material daily requires a significant amount of water. CJK has suggested it might purchase it from a local district, access a nearby sanitation line, or draw from groundwater — the last of which, according to Gooch, is not permitted under state law for this type of use.
“Without specifying where they'll get the water, they say they’ll get it from the Sanitation District because they have a water line nearby. That’s not likely,” Gooch said.
How it Can Affect Recreational Activities and Businesses
The Arkansas Headwaters Recreation Area, which stretches roughly 152 miles from Leadville to Florence, welcomed more than one million visitors in 2024. Widely recognized as the most commercially rafted river in the United States, the Arkansas attracts more than 250,000 rafters annually to a corridor extending from the headwaters above Leadville through Buena Vista, Browns Canyon, and the Royal Gorge. The river also serves as a major economic driver for surrounding communities, generating tens of millions of dollars in annual visitor spending and supporting hundreds of local jobs.
Trout Unlimited and a local rafting outfitter have both engaged in the public process, opposing the permit. Their concern is that a contamination event could occur, whether from a tailings failure, a cyanide spill or increased heavy-metal runoff during active disturbance of the waste piles. It risks damage to a fishery and a tourism economy that took generations to build.
“It’s really unclear, but a lot of people know about Leadville’s history and the contamination,” Gooch said. “A failure could make for some really nice national headlines, and the negative publicity for our community would have far-reaching effects.”
EPA officials have emphasized that existing regulatory frameworks provide meaningful protection. “If there are negative impacts from the milling operations, EPA and CDPHE have the authority to conduct investigations and cleanup activities and recover the associated costs from the entities responsible,” Sandor said.
But for residents who lived through the original contamination and the decades-long fight to reverse it, the assurance that someone can be held accountable after a spill offers limited comfort.
Who Will End Up Liable In the Long Term
Gooch and CC4LC are not categorically opposed to mining; they say they would accept a permit if the application reaches genuine technical compliance with state standards. What concerns them is what happens after.
The company’s proposed reclamation bond, a financial guarantee meant to ensure cleanup funds exist if operations cease, has been criticized by opponents as far too low to cover the actual long-term liability of maintaining a tailings facility. Mining experts retained by CC4LC have argued that all tailings facilities eventually fail, whether through erosion, water infiltration or simple neglect.
“You need something like a trust that can be drawn upon in the event the tailings fail and further mitigation is needed — not just a bond that barely covers today's conditions,” Gooch said. “That’s where we want the county to step in.”
The county’s role comes through a separate conditional use permit process, governed by the Lake County Board of Commissioners. That process, unlike the DRMS review, has jurisdiction over the trucking routes, east-side mining activity and broader land-use impacts that the state permit does not address.
Road damage from heavy truck traffic, proximity to schools along the proposed route and the long-term visibility of an active industrial operation in a community repositioning itself around tourism and outdoor recreation are all part of that conversation.
What Comes Next?
Leadville markets itself today as “America’s highest incorporated city,” a recreation hub and endurance sports destination perched at over 10,000 feet. Its identity is inseparable from mining history, as the National Mining Hall of Fame sits at the center of town, and self-guided tours of the historic tailings fields draw visitors each season.
Removing those tailings, even in the name of environmental remediation, would erase landscape features that now function as tourism assets, opponents argue.
“Even removing 500,000 tons over 10 years is insignificant in terms of the percentage of total mine waste here,” Gooch said. “But it’s very significant in terms of what it means for the historic and visual character of the area.”
For now, the permit application sits in review. CJK has until June 2026 at the latest to respond to DRMS’s list of outstanding technical questions. Public hearings will follow, and the state board will ultimately come to a decision.
The Arkansas River continues to flow through town, and its health and prosperity play a big role in the Leadville community. Whether it stays that way may depend on how many people show up for it.
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Written by: Trisha Sannappanavar
Edited by: Henry C. Passerini & Avril Silva
Trisha Sannappanavar is from California, currently attending New York University pursuing studies in Political Science, with a strong focus on human rights, environmental policy, and advocacy. She is deeply interested in how environmental justice and community-driven solutions intersect, and how journalism can amplify voices. Trisha is excited to contribute to The Restored Lands Advocate as an investigative journalist and help promote awareness, accountability, and action around environmental issues.
References:
“2025 Arkansas River Economic Value Analysis.” ARCC Water, arccwater.org/2026/04/01/2025-arkansas-river-economic-value-analysis/. Accessed 13 Apr. 2026.
Bible, Aaron. “Arkansas River Outfitters Gear up for 2026, All Eyes on the Water.” Paddling Life, 9 Apr. 2026, paddlinglife.com/destinations/arkansas-river-outfitters-gear-up-for-2026-all-eyes-on-the-water/.
Blevins, Jason. “In Headwaters of the Upper Arkansas, the River ‘Drives Everything.’” Water Education Colorado, 11 Dec. 2025, watereducationcolorado.org/fresh-water-news/in-headwaters-of-the-upper-arkansas-the-river-drives-everything/.
Blevins, Jason. “Locals Worry Plan to Recycle Leadville’s Mining Waste Could Threaten Arkansas River, Unearth Town’s Long-Buried History.” The Colorado Sun, 1 Apr. 2024, coloradosun.com/2024/03/29/leadville-mill-arkansas-river/.
Colorado Mining Town’s Polluted Legacy Has a Potential for Profit, but Some Are Wary of the Risk, www.cpr.org/2024/09/14/leadville-remining-waste-has-potential-profit-and-risk/. Accessed 13 Apr. 2026.
Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration. “ A River Reborn: The Restoration of the Upper Arkansas.” YouTube, YouTube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOVrRVUTLbw. Accessed 13 Apr. 2026.
Vistaworks. “Gold and Silver Bring the Boom to Leadville.” Leadville, Colorado, 24 Sept. 2018, leadville.com/gold-and-silver-bring-the-boom-to-leadville/.
Vistaworks. “The Many Mines of Leadville.” Leadville, Colorado, 14 June 2017, leadville.com/the-many-mines-of-leadville/.
“X3Q-Fwnhmhwf77wmzs81fq8obrhumg/Viewform?Usp=sf_link .” CC4LC Let’s Come Together to Ensure Responsible Industrial Development and Smart Environmental Stewardship in Lake County! Join Our Email List! Donate to the CC4LC Legal Defense Fund Become a CC4LC Ambassador Https://Docs.Google.Com/Forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeiiqI4kBjzjKwSjj, www.cc4lc.org/reference-library/concerned-citizens-4-lake-county. Accessed 13 Apr. 2026.
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