The small town of Fairfield has a big problem with arsenic contamination, and Mayor Lynn Gillies is appealing to President Barack Obama for help.

In a letter mailed on Friday, Gillies outlined the town's toxic trouble from arsenic, lead and mercury that has washed down from old Mercur Mining Company gold mine tailings in Manning Canyon. The tailings are on U.S. Bureau of Land Management property, but the toxic chemicals wash into Fairfield with every heavy rainstorm or snow melt.

"A private company would be expected to take care of the runoff from their property. Why not the government?" Gillies said.

Fairfield's contamination problems are well documented in an Environmental Protection Agency Region 8 Sample Report from 2000 and a more recent EPA report from April 2008. Gillies included the two reports as attachments in his letter to the president.

This is not Gillies's first attempt at getting some help cleaning up the contamination in Fairfield. He has previously contacted officials from the EPA, the BLM, the Utah State Department of Environmental Quality, Utah County and Utah County Health Department by telephone, letter and in person.

So far, the results have been disappointing. "There has been nothing done by the agencies that are charged with the responsibility of alleviating these problems," Gillies wrote in his letter.

In the letter to Obama, Gillies wrote that one BLM official told him, "The bureau is only responsible for what is on their land, and not for what has washed from their lands into Fairfield."

Although the president may never see the letter from the mayor of a tiny Utah town of only 137 residents, Gillies said that he intended to work through the chain of command.

"That's how I learned it in the Army," said Gillies, a retired military officer and combat helicopter pilot.

He's also sent the letter to Utah County Commissioners Larry Ellertson, Gary Anderson and Steve White; the Utah County Health Department; state Rep. Kenneth Sumsion, R-American Fork; state Sen. Mark Madsen, R-Eagle Mountain; state Sen. John Valentine, R-Orem; Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.; the state Department of Environmental Quality; the EPA; U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah; U.S. Sens. Orrin Hatch and Robert Bennett, both R-Utah; and U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. Fairfield's mayor is hopeful that contacting numerous officials with varying responsibilities will garner some much-needed help.

Gillies reported that before even mailing the letter, he received a personal call from Huntsman concerning Fairfield's plight. According to Gillies, Huntsman offered support in working through the bureaucracy to get Fairfield's contamination statistics into hands that can help.

The EPA studies revealed significant levels of arsenic contamination in the soil in Fairfield's flood plain, the creek water that runs through residential areas and roads where tailings were hauled in for road base and pot hole filler by county road crews back in the 1940s. The 2008 EPA study documented some soil samples in Fairfield containing more than 8,000 parts per million of arsenic. The EPA Web site lists 500 parts per million as the human health hazard level of arsenic, warranting soil removal.

The two studies' conclusions are based on more than 1,000 Fairfield soil samples. Spring 2008 runoff samples washing into the creek tested at up to 904 micrograms of arsenic per liter, an extremely high level considering that any more than 10 micrograms of arsenic per liter raises human contact warnings for the EPA.

Since it is long-term exposure to arsenic that poses a threat to human health, occasional visitors to Camp Floyd State Park do not need to worry about arsenic in the roads. But for lifelong residents of Fairfield, the threat of toxic exposure from both the dust and runoff water is a real concern. Gillies is cautioning everyone against playing in or ingesting creek water.

"My own kids used to play in the creek every day. Can the seizures they experienced and learning disabilities and other health problems some people out here have suffered be linked to the contamination? The human element is harder to document, but I don't want anyone else getting sick from this," Gillies said.

Fairfield does not get its drinking water from Manning Canyon, but from a spring. So far, Fairfield's drinking water is safe, thanks to a berm constructed by the Utah National Guard in the 1940s to divert the contaminated runoff water away from the Fairfield Spring.

The presence of arsenic in the soil on private land in Fairfield's commercial zone limits the town's growth, because excavation would release airborne arsenic dust. And as Gillies said in the letter, "We are unable to improve our roads by removing and adding the proper sub-base. This restriction comes from the EPA in Denver, Colorado."

Manning Canyon Road is closed, including the portion of the road within Fairfield's borders, and Fairfield officials do not have a key to the gate. "We are not aware of any cleanup going on up there," Gillies said.

Spring runoff season is approaching, and with it the threat of more contaminated water flooding into Fairfield if cleanup measures are not implemented quickly. Gillies said that a federal cleanup project that included both the tailings dumps on BLM land at the top of the canyon and contaminated sites in Fairfield could create jobs and, in turn, give the town a chance to bring in jobs along with development in a cleaned-up commercial zone.

"I can see where this is a win-win situation," Gillies wrote in the conclusion of his letter.