AMERICAN FORK — A reclamation project of Pacific Mine in American Fork Canyon may have just made cleanup operations across the country a whole lot easier.

Normally, because of stringent Environmental Protection Agency regulations, conservation groups may hesitate to participate in mine reclamation projects. The projects historically have come with a hefty price tag and a leash of liability that never ends.

But after two years of negotiation — and a lot of help from the EPA — one environmental organization was able to find a loophole that freed them of long-term liability.

"We're a conservation organization that (wanted) to come in and take care of the environment," said Ted Fitzgerald of Trout Unlimited, one of the country's largest coldwater conservation groups for trout and salmon. "We're not a potentially responsible party, but we're someone that's interested in seeing improvements to the watershed and incremental improvements are better than no improvements at all."

Other obstacles Trout Unlimited faced in seeking approval for this particular project were EPA regulations that require a site to be cleaned entirely and all at once.

Trout Unlimited's current project at Pacific Mine is focusing on containing harmful hard rock materials on the site that are leaching lead into the water — an incremental step to cleaning the mine.

"What we're looking at here is the middle ground," Fitzgerald said. "We're not doing everything that needs to be done, but everything that's cost effective and can be done reasonably by an organization such as ourselves."

In this project, rocks from the mine, which were originally taken for their composition of gold, silver and lead, will be placed in a special lining in the ground and then covered.

The project began Aug. 7 and will finish by the end of September, Fitzgerald said.

So far, lead levels in the water of nearby American Fork stream have been lowered from 4,000 parts per billion lead to less than 3.2 ppb.

Liability is usually used by the EPA as a way to hold landowners and polluters responsible for cleaning their land. However, when environmental organizations become involved with cleaning the polluted sites, they also become responsible for any leaching that may occur from the site in the future, even if they have no connection to the original source of pollution.

In this case, Trout Unlimited was able to side-step long-term liability by using an Administrative Order on Consent, which is an order issued by the EPA to owners of polluted land that requires the area be cleaned.