Elizabeth Mine is a former copper mining operation in South Strafford, Vermont, that ran from the early 1800s until 1958. It was added to the EPA's National Priorities List (NPL), the federal list of the most contaminated sites in the country, in June 2001. The site includes tailings piles, waste rock, open-cut mines, underground tunnels and shafts, and former processing buildings. Over its lifetime, the mine produced more than 100 million pounds of copper.
The site contains heavy metals in multiple environmental media. Groundwater holds arsenic, barium, cadmium, cobalt, copper, lead, mercury, nickel, thallium, vanadium, and zinc. Surface water carries aluminum, cadmium, chromium, cobalt, copper, cyanide, iron, lead, manganese, nickel, selenium, silver, and zinc. Soil contains copper, lead, and selenium. Sediment holds iron, manganese, selenium, silver, and zinc. Contaminated water in tributaries to Lord Brook has harmed aquatic organisms. Health risks come from people ingesting or coming into contact with contaminants in soil, sediments, surface water, and groundwater.
The EPA selected a cleanup plan in a September 2006 Record of Decision (ROD). That plan was later modified three times through documents called Explanations of Significant Differences, issued in 2008, 2015, and 2019. Cleanup work included stabilizing a tailing dam, building surface water and groundwater diversion systems, excavating and consolidating 400,000 cubic yards of waste rock, installing cover systems over two tailings piles, closing an 1898 mine entrance called an adit, and building a passive treatment system to remove iron from leachate. An interim water treatment system ran until 2018, when the passive system was installed and became operational in 2020. All physical construction finished in December 2021.
EPA has determined that human exposure is currently under control, meaning no unacceptable exposure pathways exist. Contaminated groundwater has been stabilized in its original area. However, cleanup goals for current and future land uses have not been fully met across the entire site, so the site has not been deleted from the NPL. The State of Vermont is responsible for maintaining and monitoring completed cleanup work. EPA continues to monitor the passive treatment system and plans to conduct the next Five-Year Review in 2029. The most recent Five-Year Review was completed in September 2024. Institutional controls, such as zoning restrictions and excavation limits, are in place to prevent residential development and protect cleanup components for as long as contamination or remedy components remain.
Community members who want current information about site status or land-use restrictions can contact the EPA project team directly. The Community Involvement Coordinator is Darriel Swatts, and the Remedial Project Manager (the engineer overseeing cleanup) is Nico Blomerth. Public records are available at the Norwich Public Library in Norwich, Vermont, and at the EPA Region 1 Records and Information Center in Boston, Massachusetts.
