DOLLAR BAY -- The 1800s and 1900s was the prime of copper mining, but stamp sands were left behind. The Torch Lake Superfund Site is now in place to make sure the stamp sands are not affecting the lakes or contaminating the drinking water.
“We reviewed information about the drinking water and private residential wells. The municipal water looks great by the way,” said Christina Bush, toxicologist for the Michigan Department of Community Health.
Project managers from the Department of Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are in the field reviewing the vegetation coverage used to prevent the erosion of stamp sands in the surrounding bodies of water.
“It’s a 220-acre parcel of land that we covered in 2002, and we wanted to check what type of vegetation is there, and basically what we found is that the vegetation is pretty good. In general it’s holding the sand in place, and that’s what we’re most concerned about,” said Nefertiti Di Cosmo, Remedial Project Manger for the United States Environmental Protection Agency.
Even though regular checkups on the land will continue, the EPA says their work is successful which means this area can be delisted, taken off the priority list, and the land can eventually be sold as residential in the future.
The Department of Community Health just released public health assessment documents about the mining structures left behind. They also released documents about the drinking water.
On Wednesday night the public attended an open meeting to review those documents and leave comments.
For more information on those documents, click here. You can also review a hard copy at the Lake Linden Public Library and the Portage Lake District Library.
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