SOUTH STRAFFORD — Town officials are holding out hope it can secure financial assistance to clean up a property connected to the contaminated Elizabeth Mine, but state and federal officials have so far said the work would be beyond their purview.

Cleanup of the 3-acre property off Mine Road could cost upward of $35,000, Selectboard member Jeff Solsaa said. In 2022, the town acquired the parcel — known as the “Stanley property” — after the previous owner failed to pay taxes. The land, used largely as a dumping ground, was once owned by Henry and Evelyn Stanley, who died in 2013 and 2014, respectively.

It was also part of the Elizabeth Mine site, a former copper operation that was placed on the federal government’s Superfund list in 2001. The designation is reserved for the most hazardously polluted sites in the country. The federally funded remediation efforts through the Environmental Protection Agency related to the mine included removal of waste rock, also called tailings, from a portion of the Stanley property.

Solsaa is hoping to get the property back on the tax roll. “And we’re not going to be able to put it back on there without cleanup,” he said. “It’s an eyesore. No one would buy it.”

The Superfund work that began in 2002 merely scratched the surface of debris removal — most unrelated to the mine — that needs to be done on the rest of the Stanley property.

“Over there is somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 tires, trucks, boats,” Solsaa said. “And then there’s an actual landfill. The owner used to just bring rubbish home from job sites and dump it up there. We’re going to have fill lots of dumpsters.”

What was left on the property didn’t fall under the scope of the federal cleanup.

“I was hoping that they were going to just reach a little bit further with the initial funded cleanup, but unfortunately the town didn’t own this property when the Superfund work was being done,” Solsaa said. “It’s not their responsibility in any way shape or form, but there’s a lot of infrastructure at the state level now, and I think they can afford it.”

For the area on the Stanley property where the tailings pile was located, the EPA and state Department of Environmental Conservation are in the process of jointly placing permanent land use restrictions on the property to prevent future use of groundwater, and any other disturbance of the soil, said Kasey Kathan, an environmental analyst with the DEC in charge of the project.

At this point, no proposal has been made by the EPA regarding the specifics of the restrictions. The Selectboard is hoping to use that process as an opportunity to revisit the question of funding for the Stanley property.

Previous evaluations by both the EPA and the VTDEC did not identify any mechanism to allow either agency “to remove the debris or provide funding to remove the debris,” a spokesperson for the EPA said in an email. “From a Superfund perspective, the cleanup on this property is complete with the exception of the implementation of the land use restrictions.”

But while the agencies are reluctant to contribute to financing, “we will continue to explore funding options,” Selectboard member David Paganelli said in an email.

Three months ago, the Selectboard coordinated the demolition of a mobile home and a dilapidated house on the property, which cost the town $1,500.

“There was a very well-beaten-down path leading to the front door of the mobile home, and a stepladder in the door, and hypodermic needles,” Solsaa said. “That was enough for me to say alright we have to do something.”

Frances Mize is a Report for America corps member. She can be reached at fmize@vnews.com or 603-727-3242.

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