10 years after Gold King
Last in 'Acid Mine' series takes look at where we've been, where we're going

Like many longtime area residents, Tom Schillaci remembers exactly where he was when the Gold King Mine spill happened Aug. 5, 2015. The environmental videographer was mid-shift at his job at Handlebars saloon in Silverton.

“I couldn’t just bail out of work, we were busy, so I caught the aftermath, so to speak,” he said.

And that aftermath, for those who may need a refresher, was a torrent of 3 million gallons of acid orange mine drainage rushing into the Animas River. The Tang orange plume of water soon surged its way downstream – and onto screens and front pages around the world – leaving devastated communities, farmers and businesses in its acidic wake.

For Schillaci, who had spent the last year filming his documentary series “Acid Mine Nation” – about Silverton grappling with a potential Superfund designation to clean up the toxic legacy of its mining past  – it flipped the script. With the spill, a Superfund declaration was now all but imminent.

“It was going to be a little story about whether or not Silverton and San Juan County went to Superfund intervention. And then something big happened, it turned my story upside down,” said Schillaci. “A year later, they got a Superfund designation, but not the way the community wanted it to happen.”

It is that last sticking point that is the premise for the seventh (and purportedly final) video in Schillaci’s series, “Acid Mine Nation: If My Mining Company Did That.” The 65-minute documentary, which was completed in April and first screened in Silverton in June, will be shown at 6 p.m., Tues., Aug. 5, at the Powerhouse in Durango.

“I think Episode 7 is the best video of all. It wraps it all up: how we got there, how I would do it and how the EPA is not doing it. It tells a stronger story,” Schillaci said Tuesday from his home in Massachusetts, where he moved in 2020.

In case you can’t tell by his statement, Episode 7 takes a critical look at the EPA’s response to the spill and the follow-up with the Bonita Peak Mining District Superfund declaration. It raises myriad questions surrounding the federal government’s response, notifications and promised financial compensation to those whose businesses and livelihoods were damaged by the spill, which was accidentally triggered by an EPA team.

It also takes a withering glance at the EPA’s current efforts to treat mine runoff from the Superfund site, questioning why two of the four biggest pollution sources in the area – the Red/Bonita and American Tunnel – are allowed to drain directly into Cement Creek, a tributary of the Animas. In addition, the film takes issue with the lack of baseline water quality data to chart the effort’s progress.

“There might be reasons, but I don’t agree with the reasons,” said Schillaci of the EPA’s perceived short falls.

Wins and losses

A native of Upstate New York, Schillaci took a circuitous route to his interest in the toxic mining legacy of the San Juan Mountains. After attending college out east, he moved to Beaver Creek to be a ski bum in the 1990s. That eventually led him to Denver a few years later.

While in Denver, he read an article in 2001 about FLC geosciences professor Robert Blair, who was starting the Mountain Studies Institute, a nonprofit research and education center in Silverton. He reached out to Blair, offering his services for photography and videography, and Blair, in turn, encouraged Schillaci to attend Telluride’s Mountainfilm Festival. He did – taking in a film about the now-disbanded Animas River Stakeholders Group.

Headed up by well-known Silverton residents and water luminaries Bill Simon and Peter Butler, the group formed in 1994 to address water quality issues in the Animas River drainage above Silverton. For years, the watershed had been devoid of fish, unable to support life due to its heavy metal load. However, by 2001, in part thanks to the group’s efforts as well as a now-decommissioned water treatment plant once owned by Sunnyside Gold Corp., fish returned to the formerly dead Cement Creek. 

“The early 2000s was the best we’d seen for water quality,” said Schillaci. “I got inspired.”

That inspiration led Schillaci to the West Slope, where he shot his first environmental video in Silverton in 2001. Alas, the early 2000s was the high point for water quality on Cement Creek and the Animas above town. For various complex reasons (for a detailed description, see “Acid Mine” Episode 1), the water treatment plant ceased operation soon after, and levels of toxic metals, including zinc – deadly to fish in high amounts – again rose to pre-2000 levels.

“All the gains were lost,” said Schillaci. 

 After that first video, Schillaci spent the next several years jumping around the West Slope of the Rockies, living as far south as Bloomfield, N.M., and as far north as Grand Junction. He spent eight or nine years in Durango before moving to Telluride. However, a job opportunity in New York called him back to the East Coast for a few years.

“I went to New York to chase the money, but the lesson I learned is, don’t chase the money,” he said. 

Frustrations and solutions

In 2014, he moved back to Silverton, where he lived for 3½ years. It was during this time that  the idea of Superfund status was heating up in Silverton. At the time, the Red/Bonita and Mogul mines north of town were gushing 250-300 gallons and 165 gallons a minute, respectively, of toxic runoff into Cement Creek. And that’s when the idea for the “Acid Mine Nation” series was born.

Schillaci made several episodes before health issues in 2020 forced him back to sea level on the East Coast, where he finished Episode 6. Despite no longer living in the area, Schillaci, whose close mentor Simon passed away early this year, felt obligated to follow it up with one last salvo.

“I thought Episode 6 was the last one, but sh*t kept happening,” he said. “They’ve spent $140 million on the Superfund, but there’s been no appreciable improvement in the water quality below Silverton. That’s what frustrates me and other people; that’s what kept me going.” 

In fact, the process was so frustrating that Butler, a member of the Citizens Superfund Working Group – who had some of the most institutional knowledge of the drainage and surrounding topography – resigned from his advisory board post in late 2023.

It is this “consternation,” as Schillaci puts it, that led to the Episode 7 title. However, it is meant not just to lob complaints at the EPA but to offer solutions. Those include treating the runoff from not just the Gold King Mine but the American Tunnel and Red/Bonita. For starters, those two drain onto Bureau of Land Management land, meaning the EPA would need to work out some sort of agreement with its fellow federal agency. He said he realizes the resulting load of sludge load – left when the tainted water evaporates – may be too much for the existing tailings pond to handle. But with the planned conversion of Pond #4 at the Mayflower Mill site, there should be more space for sludge disposal soon.

As for the other big polluter in the district, the Mogul Mine, it presents more of a challenge because of its distance from the Gold King water treatment plant. But Schillaci said “in-situ” treatment of the water with acid-neutralizing microbes is an idea worth exploring.

Schillaci recently discussed his ideas during a presentation at a mining conference in Leadville, which was attended by the project manager for the Bonita Peak Superfund Site, Joy Jenkins.

“She said, ‘Maybe there are some things we can improve on.’ That, to me, was the best outcome I could have ever hoped for – the EPA project seeing they might be able to improve on some of the processes,” he said. “They should be treating more water. I hope that’s their goal.” 

And last but not least, Schillaci would like to see the federal government make good on its long-overdue promise to reimburse economic losses as a result of the spill. In September 2024, Colorado Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper introduced SB 568, “The Gold King Mine Spill Compensation Act,” which would pay losses to those impacted directly. However, the legislation has yet to go anywhere.

Of course, just as the acid mine problem around Silverton was decades in the making, so, too will be the solutions, Schillaci conceded. 

“These (Superfund efforts) are 20-year things, we’re just 10 years in,” Schillaci said.

Which leads to the question: will there be an Episode 8?

“There’s a potential for an addendum if the bill to pay claims moves through,” said Schillaci, now 61. “But I think I’m done ripping on the EPA.”

In the meantime, he invites people to come to the Powerhouse next Tuesday – especially those newer to the area who may be unfamiliar with the event.

“For people who came to Durango after, they might not know anything about the Gold King Mine spill,” he said. 

And, for those who were here to witness the disaster flowing down their beloved waterway, what better venue to share those forever-etched memories?

“The Powerhouse is right on the river, so I want to do a cocktail hour outside, and people can tell their stories of ‘Where did you see the orange river?’ Because the orange river went right through there,” he said. ■