Think there'll be any fish left?

The problem is that this should have been designated a Superfund site by the EPA long ago, but leaders of the town of Silverton and San Juan County have apparently blocked it -- reportedly because it would hurt tourism. Such a designation would allow the EPA to do permament remediation of toxic water from a number of abandoned mines -- and sue everybody involved with them for contribution. Instead, the EPA was forced to use stop-gap measures which often (as in this case) fail. So, I really don't blame the EPA at all. I blame anybody who has impeded Superfund designation of these abandoned mines. The EPA was merely trying to collect polluted water backed up behind a temporary dam so they coult treat it, and they under estimated the volume of water. Smaller quantities of polluted water have been flowing from these abandoned mines for years into the Anamas. That's why we are advised not to eat fish caught in that river. These abandoned mines must have Superfund status, and now!

"The Environmental Protection Agency has said it caused a large release of hazardous water from a mine above the town of Silverton, in Southwest Colorado."

timy

Sport climber
Durango

Aug 7, 2015 - 07:43pm PT
But they're having a healing ceremony for the river at the dog park, things should be okay.

Any idiot that knows anything about the San Juans and hydraulics could have predicted this - plug one mine at a lower elevation and you will back up water in the connected mines until it blows out the next one above.

But since it's the feds, all is well and quiet. Even though they lied about the spill and it's three times bigger than they claimed.

this wasn't caused by local resistance to anything.

If the locals had allowed the area to receive Superfund status this situation wouldn't exist today.

The EPA is trying to cheat Navajo Indians by getting them to sign away their rights to future claims from the agency’s Gold King Mine disaster, tribal officials charged Wednesday, adding more to the administration’s public relations problems over the spill that threatens critical Southwest waterways.

EPA officials were going door-to-door asking Navajo, some of whom don’t speak English as their primary language, to sign a form that offers to pay damages incurred so far from the spill, but waiving the right to come back and ask for more if their costs escalate or if they discover bigger problems, Navajo President Russell Begaye told The Washington Times.


“It is underhanded. They’re just trying to protect their pocketbook,” Mr. Begaye said in a telephone interview.

Mr. Begaye has already promised a lawsuit on behalf of the Navajo Nation, and said he suspects the EPA is trying to buy off as many Navajo as possible now to head off a bigger settlement later.

The spill has dumped millions of gallons of polluted water into the Animas River, which feeds the San Juan river and eventually the Colorado River, which provide water for grazing and crops in much of the Four Corners area, which is the confluence of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah. The Navajo Nation covers much of that territory.

The EPA did not have an immediate comment on Mr. Begaye’s charges Wednesday.

Rep. Rob Bishop, chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, said through a spokeswoman that he’s heard the complaints from the Navajo Nation and will be investigating the entire disaster.

“Chairman Bishop is outraged at the reports that the EPA is asking tribal members to sacrifice their rights after EPA’s ineptitude has potentially threatened their health and livelihoods,” spokeswoman Julia Bell Slingsby said. “People are suffering because of EPA negligence and yet the federal government’s response is not to help, but to engage in grasping for legal cover before the full extent of damage is known to Navajo farmers.”

She said the EPA would come down hard on a private party who tried the same tactics, and demanded to know why the Interior Department, which has oversight of Indian affairs, hasn’t come to the aid of the tribes.

Mr. Begaye said the situation is all the more enraging because the EPA has admitted it will take decades to clean up the spill, yet the agency is pushing for Navajo to calculate their costs now and sign away their rights for the future.

He also said EPA workers have said there are other mines that could also face similar problems, and said the priority should be on fixing those and cleaning up the current spill, which is still flowing, rather than trying to deflect liability.

“Our leadership from the White House — it’s almost nonexistent. And now they’re asking us to waive all of this stuff, and the yellow water is still flowing into the river, nothing has been contained,” he said. “It’s just a huge — I don’t want to use the word coverup, but it’s just government not doing its job, causing all of this to happen to our people, our land, our economy.”

We've been selling heavy metal removal systems since the 50's, an IX unit would have cleaned this up just fine at a reasonable cost and could have started years ago.

The Washington Times is a daily broadsheet published at 3600 New York Avenue NE, Washington, D.C., United States. It was founded in 1982 by the founder of the Unification Church, Sun Myung Moon and was owned by News World Communications, an international media conglomerate associated with the church, until 2010 when it was purchased directly by a group led by Moon.

"Taylor then went on to explain in detail how millions of gallons of heavy-metal laden water would be released because of the buildup of too much pressure by the EPA plugging the mine. Under this scenario, the EPA would need instant funding to build a treatment plant for the clean up process. Taylor was dead-on. "“Based on my 47 years of knowledge and experience as a professional geologist,” Taylor wrote. “It appears to me that the EPA is setting your town and the area up for a possible Superfund blitzkrieg.”

Taylor then explained that EPA officials were fully aware of what was going to happen to the mine after certain portals were blocked and that the EPA’s “grand experiment” would backfire shortly after. He explained in detail how the integrity of the mine would quickly degrade, then gave the dire prediction that within 120 days, there would be a catastrophic failure.

“Reading between the lines, I believe that has been the EPA’s plan all along,” Taylor continued. “The proposed Red & Bonita plugging plan has been their way of getting their foot in the door to justify their hidden agenda for construction of a treatment plant.”

Had the locals not fought the Superfund designation the site would have been addressed properly long ago instead of with the stop gap measures which led to this spill.

Speaking of personal attacks...

The permissive General Mining Law of 1872, written to encourage mining, is still in force even though the pick, shovel and pan were long ago replaced by giant earthmovers that gouge open pits more than a mile across and thousands of feet deep. Billions of gallons of water are consumed in production, pumped through miles of vulnerable pipelines and stored in open pits of acidifying waste; huge swaths of land are destroyed in the wake of closed, abandoned and inadequately remediated mines.

"Navajo Nation president Russell Begaye’s finger came up brown and oily after he ran it inside the spigot of a water tank, one of nine delivered by an EPA contractor to Shiprock, New Mexico, in the aftermath of the accident that sent orange mining waste down the Animas and San Juan rivers.

“This is what they expect our animals to drink and to use this and pollute our farmland, our canals?” said Mr. Begaye in video posted Wednesday on his Facebook page.

“This is totally unacceptable. How can anybody give water from a tank like this that was clearly an oil tank and expect us to drink it, our animals to drink it? And to contaminate our soil with this?” said Mr. Begaye. “It’s just wrong. Clearly, it’s wrong.”"

The EPA didn't have any 'role' in the recent spill beyond hiring and oversight of the contractors who were attempting to pipe the collapsed entrance for draining. Should they have stopped and thought it through more in light of the the retired engineer's editorial? Quite possibly, but once the project wheels and contracts are in motion - whether in government or private enterprise - people are loathe to postpone the work.

The EPA didn't have any 'role' in the recent spill beyond hiring and oversight of the contractors who were attempting to pipe the collapsed entrance for draining.

I was amused, but not surprised, that the GOP party line was that that spill was a causus belli to attack and destroy the EPA.

The executive branch under this administration is the most lawless, by far, of my lifetime, and I was an adult during the Nixon administration, so that's saying a lot.

The contamination they unleashed was a foreseeable consequence of activities the EPA directed.

The EPA was subpoenaed on August 10th to provide documents by August 24th concerning the agency’s involvement in the Gold King Mine spill.

The EPA ignored the Congressional subpoena. They have not turned over any documents.
The Congressional hearing is September 9th.

The $1.78-million portable treatment facility will be located in Gladstone, according to EPA officials. It will be operational by Oct. 14 and operate during the coming winter. The contract provides for 42 weeks of treatment, with the option to start or stop treatment as needed.

My guess was 2mm to do what they should have been doing 10 years ago, so I wasn't too far off.

Among the thousands of contracts for “household” and office furniture were a hexagonal table ($5,539), hickory chairs ($6,391), a “Galerie lounge chair” with “Galerie settee” ($2,641 for the set), and a pencil drawer ($813.57).

One of the contracts called for a “Herman Miller chair with adjustable arms, swivel, lumbar, caster and tilt,” costing $4,047.

Last year, internal emails surfaced from a regional EPA office asking employees to please stop defecating in the hallways.

Those emails followed reports that workers in an Alaska EPA office were caught watching porn at work and another employee at the Washington headquarters posed as a CIA agent.

Those reports prompted the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to scold EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy and threatened to hold her in contempt for blocking their investigations into questionable activity.

In 2013, it was revealed that EPA contractors were using a massive warehouse for “secret man caves.”

That same year, a high-level EPA official admitted he stole nearly $900,000 from the government by pretending to work for the CIA in order to skip work for long stretches of time.

“It is not a shock that the same agency which failed to realize that their top paid employee was a no-show for years, even giving him performance bonuses while he didn’t work, is indulging in high-end office furniture. Apparently at the EPA, you need a $750 chair to hide the fact that no one is sitting in it,

This horrible disaster (and untold others just like it) would never have happened if the EPA didn't exist.