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Gold King Superfund Site: A Case Study

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Dear Friends at the Gold King Superfund Site: We would like to thank you for giving this project to our company. We understand how serious this acid mine drainage problem is and would like to assure you confidence in our ability to safely deal with the issue. Our company has been in the business of water treatment and acid mine drainage cleanup for 40 years now. We have dealt with 203 similar issues since the creation of our company. Although we are based in Pennsylvania, we do water treatment projects all over the United States and work primarily out-of-state. In this letter, we would like to give our proposal for how to effectively solve this problem to you. To ensure that the Animas River returns to its original state and the drainage from the Gold King Mine is cleaned up, we believe that a high density sludge process should be used. We believe the most effective high density sludge process is the health steele process. This process works by first mixing the sludge with lime in a tank so that the water can return to it’s original ph. Once the water reaches a safe ph for drinking, it reaches the lime reactor where air is added to ensure the water doesn’t change when exposed to air. Once the water leaves the lime reactor it is transported to the floc tank, where the remaining contaminated particles are removed from the drinking water. The final step is when the water reaches the clarifier and is sent back out to the river, as a healthy drinking water. …show more content…

Our company has used this process in most of our previous projects, and we’ve found it to be an excellent “go to” for spills of this kind. In short, this method neutralizes any pollutants in the acid mine drainage using lime, and it should return the water to the Animas River in a safe

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