On the Front page of the paper today.... this article about MY husband.... married to a superstar in a hardhat, I guess...
WINONA - Articulated dumptrucks kicked up clouds of dust as they balled it up and down Winona Road late Tuesday morning. Three trucks from MD Contracting in Baraga shuttled back and forth between a borrow pit, where an excavator loaded them with clay-rich sandy soil, and the old Winona Mine's field of stamp sand a short distance down the road. The trucks dumped the red-orange earth in front of a pair of bulldozers that spread it six inches thick over some of the site's last remaining exposed stamp sand.
Tuesday saw the last of the heavy dirt moving in the reclamation project that began Aug. 1. Before the work began, six and a half acres of land land just west of the road had been a barren expanse of green-gray stamp sand.
"This whole thing has been reshaped, the ground has been completely regraded," U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service Project Manager/Engineer Rob Aho said.
Aho is managing the project under contract to the conservation district.
The affected land's primary feature is an unnamed tributary of the Sleepy River. Water only flows in the tributary during spring run-off. But that water was carrying stamp sand and its attendant pollutants, especially copper, into the Sleepy River and disrupting trout habitat.
"The particles were just migrating downstream into the Sleepy River," Aho said.
The stamp sand in the tributary itself is now covered over with filter fabric and a layer of mine rock riprap. The length of the lined channel is about 2,250 feet.
Most of the surrounding ground, covered over with six inches of clay/sand, has been seeded with a mixture of seven types of grass and clover.
Aho said this should provide good hunting on the state-owned land this winter.
"Locals are excited about it for deer hunting, with the grass it should open up some opportunities," he said.
Work on the reclamation project was supposed to begin in the spring, but a moratorium on state grants Gov. Jennifer Granholm put in place during last year's state budget crisis stifled the project's funding flow from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The project was in the final steps of approval when the moratorium was put in place. Funding later came through despite the moratorium and engineering and design work took place over last winter.
That financial situation also delayed a second stamp sand remediation project for which the conservation district had planned to start preliminary work last year. Aho said planning and engineering for reclamation of the stamp sand deposits at the former Central Mine in Keweenaw County will begin this winter.
Two of three portions of the Central project are scheduled for next year. Part of the work there involves rerouting a portion of the East Branch of the Eagle River by digging a channel that mimics the flow of a natural trout stream.
Dan Schneider can be reached at dschneider@mininggazette.com
