From the “if a citizen or company did this there would be hell to pay” department:
Guest essay by Emily Zanotti (via Somewhat Reasonable)
The Environmental Protection Agency often justifies its own existence by noting that corporations, who see profit as their goal rather than environmental protection, are ill-equipped (or at least, ill-prioritized) to care for America’s natural resources.
It turns out that, perhaps, the EPA might also be ill-equipped to handle toxic waste when it comes to preventing large-scale pollution of our nation’s waterways. In fact, they may have caused, on its own, one of our nation’s greatest environmental disasters. EPA crews trying to collect and contain waste water in the Gold King mine in Durango, Colorado, loosed 1.1 million gallons of “acidic, yellowish” discharge, causing the pollution – which includes levels of arsenic, lead, cadmium, aluminum and copper – to flow into the Animas River (an early tributary of the Colorado) at a rate of 1200 gallons per minute.
From the Denver Post:
EPA chiefs flew in Friday and acknowledged an inappropriate initial response Wednesday in which they downplayed the severity and failed to anticipate the downstream impacts.
Durango identifies itself as the “River City,” and residents’ lives revolve around fishing, swimming, tubing and entertaining tourists along the Animas River.
Most longtime residents know too well the problem of old mines that leak heavy metals into headwaters — an issue around Colorado and the western United States — but never expected a ruinous onslaught like this.
Holly Jobson, 62, walking at noon along banks where yellow sediment was glomming onto rocks, said Silverton ought to push for a proper federal cleanup around mines. Silverton officials in the past have resisted, fearing the stigma of a federal Superfund cleanup designation and the impact on tourism.
By this morning, the waterflow had decreased to around 580 gallons per minute. Lab testing has not yet begun on site, and the EPA is apologizing for their slow response rate, particularly considering the magnitude of the incident. Durango gets most of its water from the Aminas River and relies on the river’s beauty to bring tourists to the town. The city has already lost $150,000 in revenue this month. 1,000 water wells are presumed contaminated.
The EPA has not only claimed responsibility for the spill, but is claiming responsibility for a slow response as well. The EPA says now that the spill was far faster, and far larger than they initially assumed.
The EPA did not have to be on site, to begin with, it seems. The region has a coalition of local organizations called the Animas River Stakeholders Group who have worked together since 1994 to address pollution coming out of nearby mines. The Gold King mine is widely known to be one of the most polluted, leaking around 50 to 250 gallons of waste water per minute. While the group had pushed to find the source of the leak and stem it from there, the EPA went ahead with the project apart from the group, and seemingly without local expertise.
UPDATE: The EPA has now released new figures, and its now 3 million gallons of toxic wastewater and climbing
Emily Zanotti is researcher and writer for The Heartland Institute, and a blogger and columnist for the The American Spectator. She is a ten-year veteran of political communications and online journalism based out of Chicago, where she runs her own digital media firm. Her work has appeared at her former blog, NakedDC, on the opinion page of the Wall Street Journal and across the web.
This is a real environmental disaster.
It’s probably worth brainstorming what to do about it before the piling in on the blame.
I mean, we know who is to blame. But do we know what to do about real pollution?
+1
Best to first define what the solution was that EPA was trying to use. This was no breach of a containment pond, there are seen at the Gold King site larger than around 20 feet in length. But there have been long-time government-directed efforts to fill mine entrances with concrete plugs. What happens when you mess with such things? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOJRp9lx6rU
You linked to a Pepsi commercial?
Watch the commercial all the way through – 49 seconds – then you’ll get the metaphor. EPA Bulldozer nudging concrete plug which is the only thing preventing a towering labyrinth of mine water from pouring out. What could possibly go wrong?
Did the EPA have legal authority to be on that private land? Did they have the land owners permission? Did they have a warrant signed by a Judge? We need a Congressional hearing on this put of co tell outfit. Who protects us from the EPA?
..migrant workers digging the DAM ITSELF TO CREATE HOLE
“But do we know what to do about real pollution?”
Well for one AGW apologists need to stop deregulating environmentally destructive industries to the point of universal legal immunity – case in point ^^^ the article above. F’ing hypocrites…
The above agency is a government agency and, as such, is regulated.
Therefore, to blame deregulation for this evil is completely and totally stupid and evil.
Yeah, NotTheOne,
You tell ’em! Those Gold King environmental rapists were doing their rape of Mother Gaia all the way up until 1924! Rape those raping rapers! I’ll bet George W. Bush was right there with them! Think of all the laws they broke even before that bastid Nixon created the EPA!
Wrong, Pile On good and hard.
Give them everything they deserve and more. See that, for once, those responsible are punished. Then force the EPA out of the picture. This is the end result of them screwing up everything about those mines for decades.
With the EPA gone, there will be room for people who know what is going on to come in and clean up the mess.
Tony, I visited the area over the weekend (as I have dozens of times). The river through Silverton was already essentially normal. If you ask local mineralogists about the composition of the minerals in the area, all of the contents of the “spill” are indigenous. In fact, just the other side of the Red Mountains from Cement Creek, the Uncompahgre flows that color virtually year around above and through Ouray. The Red Mountains are red due to the heavy mineral deposits in the mountains. You can get an idea of the colors from Google Maps aerial view.
The whole thing would have never happened if the EPA just let the water trickle out of the mine in the first place. It would have been diluted naturally, as it has for millennia. The photo below posted by Samuel P Cogar looks like most of the streams in the San Juan mountains. It is a mineral-rich area!
There is no clean up process for this. We can only hope that it’s highly diluted by time it reaches Lake Powell where the water will sink to the bottom and linger there for tens to hundreds of years.
No, it won’t. The discoloration is not sediment in the ordinary sense of the term. See downthread explanation. It can be diluted, certainly, and will be in Lake Powell. But only RO desalination can fix that water.
Iron oxide? Nah At a low pH it would have been reduced and would appear more green.
Cadmium yellow.
Cadmium orange.
Most probably Iron Hydroxide, common name limonite. If it is it is relatively harmless. Cadmium or selenium would be a true disaster.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itai-itai_disease
Just read down further, at a PH of 3 or 4 this would not be limonite, it would be really nasty stuff.
No, those on the response team need to come up with a response plan. Our job is to point out that the buffoonish focus by the epa on the non issue of climate change has made them ill prepared to devote proper attention and resources to real environmental problems.
Okay, how about reforms on permits for agencies to do this type of work and full disclosure to all communities and local governments and the public before hand. Was there any notice given on the workplan?
How much CO2 was released?
Obama knows what’s important.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-12/did-epa-intentionally-poison-animas-river-secure-superfund-money
A week before The EPA disastrously leaked millions of gallons of toxic waste into The Animas River in Colorado, this letter to the editor was published in The Silverton Standard & The Miner local newspaper, authored by a retired geologist detailing verbatim, how EPA would foul the Animas River on purpose in order to secure superfund money…
“But make no mistake, within seven days, all of the 500gpm flow will return to Cememnt Creek. Contamination may actually increase… The “grand experiment” in my opinion will fail.
And guess what [EPA’s] Mr. Hestmark will say then?
Gee, “Plan A” didn’t work so I guess we will have to build a treat¬ment plant at a cost to taxpayers of $100 million to $500 million (who knows).
Reading between the lines, I believe that has been the EPA’s plan all along”
I read the letter this morning. He hit the nail on the head! Prescient!
That was the EPA plan from the beginning. Also, Lake Powell is the favorite holiday fishing place of all those politically unacceptable “rednecks” from Utah, Colorado, and Arizona, who rent houseboats every year and have good time with their politically unacceptable brats. Damn breeders. A perfect water reservoir to poison, don’t you think?
I suppose such rank double standards can also be seen in the way that ‘they’ get away with the mass slaughter of birds and bats by the diabolical wind and solar factories – whereas anyone else would have to ‘stand tall before The Man’. I expect they’ll wriggle out of this one too, as per usual…
EPA aka Environmental Pollution Authority
You beat me to it!
The typical heavy-handed, we-know-better-than-you, incompetent, dictatorial attitude of the federal government in a nutshell …
“While the group had pushed to find the source of the leak and stem it from there, the EPA went ahead with the project apart from the group, and seemingly without local expertise.”
This event is likely to stick in the public,s mind for some time. It is such a classic example of bureaucratic ineptitude. They believe that no one understands the issues better than themselves, and thus solve a given problem. Their stance on catastrophic climate change fits right in with that thought.
“EPA causes a major environmental disaster, the question is: will it fine itself and fire those involved?”,
Firing is the only proper thing because fining a public government department is pointless seeing as it is all tax payers money anyway. Having said that, its unlikely that anyone will get fired. only firing nowadays occurs when a young office girl/ intern is involved and even Clinton got away with that.!
Cheers
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com
If there’s any justice left in this country, Gina McCarthy should be fired for this one.
“Gina McCarthy should be fired for this one.”
Nope, she’ll blame it on; “a couple of rogue agents” and escape unscathed.
I hear the hard drives crashing already.
I hear that, too. It sounds like a bag of hammers.
And, in a week or so when some reporter asks the President about it, he will chime in that there is not even a smidgen of pollution caused by the EPA
No Obama public comment? Like “Keep a boot on the throat of BP” funny that.
The EPA updates the discharge amounts this morning and stated over three million gallons were let out.
Over 3 million…Well 6 million is over 3 million and 12 million is over 3 million
The discharge is 580 gallons/minute.
24 hours/day 60 minutes/hour = 1440 minutes/day
1440 minutes/day x 580 gallons/minute = 835,200 gallons/day
Every day that the discharge isn’t stopped is another .8 million gallons
Jeebus H Cripes!
An excellent opportunity to defund that thoroughly compromised agency. Is this upstream of lake Mead?
Yes
Let’s hope that when the lab tests come back they show there aren’t any major ‘nasties’ in there, despite the garish yellow colour of the sediment. I suppose that depends partly on what the old mine was for and what was used in there at the time.
I recall the tailing lake which burst its banks in Romania, back in 2000, spewing millions of gallons of bright red, poisonous sludge onto the surrounding land and settlements – let’s hope to goodness it’s not a re-run of that scale of disaster…
Remember Hinkley California? So much groundwater contamination there decimated the town.
Dreadnaught, the nasties are there. For sure lead, arsenic, and cadmium. The local Durango folks have been worried about this mine leaking for years (50-250 gallons per day) and had the analyses.
When that breech is plugged to stop the “outflow” of that acid mine drainage …… don’t be surprise iffen the river channel looks like this for sometime thereafter, to wit:
Yes, upstream of about everything on the Colorado River, including Lake Powell, upstream from Lake Meade.
Woe be to Durango.
ANd just what does this do to the drinking water supply for essentially everyone in the Southeast USA? Last I heard, even LA gets most of their water from the Colorado River.
Last time I checked, LA was n the South Western United States. I don’t think the Colorado River flows to the South East.
@george
The Colorado river feeds Lake Mead https://www.google.com/maps/place/Colorado+River/@36.1448599,-113.5370016,9z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x8737e89b70298547:0x165dff811dd0901e , and thus, yes, LA.
Remember, the Great Miami River is -not- in Florida. Don’t conflate river names with location.
George,
I think I see the source of your confusion. “usurbrain” intended LA to be Los Angeles, CA (which does take some water from the Colorado River). You must have taken LA to mean Louisiana (which is indeed the postal designation for that state).
Bruce
George,
Oh, my bad. I read the comments too quickly. Now I see that “usurbrain” mistakenly said “Southeast USA” rather than “Southwest USA”.
Never mind. Now I understand your comment.
It first drains into the San Juan river which goes into Lake Powell, which is NE of the Grand Canyon and of course drains through the Grand Canyon into Lake Mead. So all that water will be affected…
The solution to pollution is dilution. Lake Powell is pretty darn big compared to3 million gallons of metal contaminated water.
Ah Lake Mead feeds Las Vegas. They are finishing up a new feeder tunnel to draw water Its set as low to the bottom of the lake as possible.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/7cb3a24498bf4de3857b94d3dd333649/las-vegas-completing-last-straw-draw-lake-mead-water
I guess I’ll drive over to Bullhead City in a few days and have a look. Sigh.
michael
Leaking since the 1920s.
I wonder what is or is not being done to stop the 580 GPM flow into the river?
So all of this will wind up in Lake Powell, and since the Glen Canyon dam is a major source of power for the region, and a major source of irrigation water, and is also the main source of flow for the lower Colorado River…it will not be possible to simply shut of the flow from Lake Powell, I wonder what the turnover time for the various dams on this river system is? 10 years? 20? 50?
If this is ionic suspension, rather than sediment, it will not just settle out…will it?
I think they need to do whatever can be done to try and neutralize this flow before it reaches Lake Powell and is diluted.
Perhaps dumping chelating agent by the multi-ton load into the river at the leading edge of the contamination.
Do it fast.
This is the same EPA which denies small landholders the use of their own property if water is slow to drain during a rain, by calling the puddle “wetlands” which must be “protected” and all of this in contravention of the “takings clause” of the US Constitution. There is no help for you if beavers build a dam and back water up on your place, as you just lost your rights to graze, or build a structure, or to use the land and that which surrounds it for any of your own purposes.
President Barack Obama insisted at the weekend: ‘BP is responsible for this leak. BP will be paying the bill’.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said yesterday: ‘We will keep our boot on the throat of BP to ensure that they’re doing all that they, all that is necessary, while we do all that is humanly possible to deal with this incident.’
What is he saying about this ecological disaster?……….crickets…..
You want to know something more blood-boiling?
Given the Cradle-to-Grave requirement, the owner of the mine is legally liable for all the damage caused by the EPA spill.
The actions of third parties, up to and including crimes and fraud committed against the generator, do not absolve the generator from any liability for their waste. The EPA can legally bill the owner of the mine for all cleanup and give THEM a multi-billion dollar fine for this. Given this agency, they might try actually do it.
RCRA’s a nasty law, especially if you get on the wrong side of it with something that cannot be burned.
You can’t be serious. If they try to do that, they’ll be dead by defunding.
I know what he will say…that Republicans underfunded the EPA and led to this mess.
Regarding the headline:
No
No
We return to our regularly scheduled war on coal.
Would have thought this ideal comedy material for the final of Jon Stewart’s Daily “faux news” show….the one that so many US Millennials trust as “reliable” news.
Nope. Maybe the revelation that Stewart met regularly with Obama had something to do with it. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/jon-stewart-secretly-visited-barack-obama-in-white-house-20150728
Ask Richard Windsor. He’ll know what to do.
Maybe John C. Beale can be called it, this looks like a big enough problem.
From the Horses mouth.
http://epaosc.org/site/site_profile.aspx?site_id=11082
“Colorado Parks and Wildlife has indicated they are optimistic that the effects of the spill on terrestrial wildlife will be minimal.”
You don’t say.
Apparently the magnitude of the effects is determined by who is paying the damages.
Rong End !
Another in a long line of incompetent federal bureaucracies. Of course they should be shut down, but as with the TSA (which failed to detect bombs and weapons 90% of the time in unannounced tests) the EPA instead will most likely demand more taxpayer money to improve their incompetency level.
Liberalism 101: they never fail, they just need more time and more money.
No, it is not liberalism, it is socialism. Liberalism means you are free to use your money and buy what you want, even if I don’t like it. Socialism is this endless series of expensive failures for the common good caused by ‘somebody else’ and with the promise ‘next time it will work out’.
Repeat after me: greens are not liberal, they are socialists; greens are not liberal, they are socialists; greens are not liberal, they are socialists; greens are not liberal, they are socialists…
jvcstone. EPA asking for more money to clean up the mess they caused is a certainty. It is also a certainty that they will find someone else to blame, fine, sue, etc.. Now they have the opportunity to ask for hundreds of missions of dollars for a long term monitoring and rehabilitation project on the Animas river. An ill wind always blows favorably for a self-justifying (through fraud and lies) monster agency. Although the pollution will undoubtedly reach Lake Powell and Lake Mead, I doubt that EPA will ever mention it. Unless of course if they find it politically and financially useful.
EPA is a rouge monster ripping and slashing Constitutional law in America.
The same kind of incompetent boobs want to run our heath care system. They are doing such a great job for our military and veterans/sarc. Maybe we deserve the same crappy treatment, we elected these boobs. I would just like to say to all our officials — Please don’t help us anymore!
The same incompetent boobs want to solve all of the world,s problems.
Their utopia is the rest of our dystopia.
I think mark Twain said.”Politicians are like diapers and need to be changed often, and for the same reason”
The article concludes by saying that the EPA went ahead with the project “…seemingly without local expertise.” Or anyone else’s. apparently.
Sounds a bit like the Environment Agency here in the UK. It slavishly followed EU rules regarding the Somerset Levels here in the SW of thecountry. These rules totally disregarded local advice on the need to dredge the water channels so lo and behold as a result there were devastating floods during the 2013 – 2014 winter. About 17,000 acres of farmland were flooded, with one village abandonded and several more totally cut off. But, of course, the Environment Agency was not to blame – it was a “natural event”. Fhe flood waters only started to recede after they brought in huge pumps from the Netherlands, who, of course, have a great deal of experience in managing low lying flood prone areas.
Wrote that sad saga up as essay Somerset Levels because Julia Slingo of UK Met tried to blame it on climate change.
Even now, the Environment Agency has only been forced to maintain/dredge two meagre 4 mile sections of the Parrett and Tone. Formerly the entire system of drains was maintained continually.
And for good reason. The channels are man-made and carry water from uplands across the levels. The extremely low gradient and low flow velocity of the channels allows for high deposition of silt. Constant maintenance is unfortunately a design prerequisite.
No use leaving such a system to nature – since it isn’t natural. It is a man made engineering project and should be treated as such.
I believe that somewhere in the region of £10 million was spent on the 8 mile dredging program.
Although I suspect that that includes about £9.5 million for consultation and vole counting, and then £500K for the diggers and manpower.
The concern now, should be, what about the rest of the Somerset drainage system that is in the hands of the EA.
I think that we need to rephrase the protest – “give the Somerset rivers back to the people of Somerset”.
Why were the fools at the EA ever handed this power to destroy the Somerset environment.
The local drainage boards charged drainage rates and maintained this system without fault for decades before the EA came in and buggered everything up.
Anyway, only 8 miles have been dredged so, expect more floods downstream of the catastrophe of 2014.
If they had really learned then they would have reinstated the dredging barges, which they scrapped in the 1990’s – and dredged the entire length of all the major channels, starting at the sea and working inland.
Over time, this would have been the most cost effective approach.
However, the EA now has a taste for the profitability of disaster…
I wonder if the EPA got a permit form the EPA for this discharge
I think the EPA should arrest the EPA and suspend their mandate to oversee environmental issues.
A lot of environmental laws do not have a criminal intent clause, so several of the people in the EPA could be facing serious prison time.
I agree the EPA needs to be taken in tow but disasters like this are dangerous in other ways to that goal, Some nit wit in Washington will suggest that we need to create a “super” bureaucracy to oversee EPA, Corps of Engineers, BLM, Fish and Wildlife…just as homeland security is to federal law enforcement.
Nope, big raises to all. It’s the Solyndra exec bonus effect and IRS/VA effect.
Another liberal mantra…fail upwards!!
The polite rendition is: “Screw up and move up”.
From a Fox News story on the matter:
“David Ostrander, an EPA spokesman, said last week the agency is taking responsibility for the incident. “We typically respond to emergencies, we don’t cause them, but this is just something that happens when we are dealing with mines sometimes,” Ostander said.” (Source: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/08/10/navajo-nation-aims-to-sue-epa-over-devastating-mining-spill/?intcmp=hpbt3)
Can you imagine the uproar if a mining company caused a contamination a fraction the size of this one, and their spokesperson made an official statement along the lines of, “This is just something that happens when we are mining sometimes.”
“Can you imagine the uproar if a mining company caused a contamination a fraction the size of this one”
Actually, the mining company WAS the cause. Just not the immediate cause.
Just saying…
No, the EPA was the cause. They even admitted it.
So this would have happened if the mining company had designed the mine in a responsible manner? I think not. The mine is indirectly responsible.
This mine closed almost 100 years ago.
trafamadore has no understanding of the Constitution.
dbstealey: “trafamadore has no understanding of the Constitution.”
You must mean this one, from the de facto bill of rights:
Article 3.5: capitalists have the right to wreck the landscape and the taxpayers must pay to clean up the mess.
True enuf. You must be right! Good one.
U.S. Constitution: Article I, Section 10, Clause 1.
Ex post facto
ex post facto adj. Formulated, enacted, or operating retroactively. [Med Lat., from what is done afterwards] Source: AHD
In U.S. Constitutional Law, the definition of what is ex post facto is more limited. The first definition of what exactly constitutes an ex post facto law is found in Calder v Bull (3 US 386 [1798]), in the opinion of Justice Chase:
1st. Every law that makes an action done before the passing of the law, and which was innocent when done, criminal; and punishes such action. 2d. Every law that aggravates a crime, or makes it greater than it was, when committed. 3d. Every law that changes the punishment, and inflicts a greater punishment, than the law annexed to the crime, when committed. 4th. Every law that alters the legal rules of evidence, and receives less, or different, testimony, than the law required at the time of the commission of the offense, in order to convict the offender.
The mining company created a mess, I won’t dispute that. However, they kept the mess contained. It was the EPA who mishandled the mess and caused it pollute the streams.
And my bigger point was the ridiculousness of the EPA’s statement that this was just something that happens sometimes.
The prohibition against ex post facto penalties applies to criminal punishments. OTW the Superfund law would have been held unconstitutional.
By your logic, G*d (or Gaia) was the ultimate cause, because if he (or she) had not put the mountains there, there would not have been any mining.
In fact, one could take your stupid logic to any extreme for almost any situation in an effort to avoid responsibility. If a drunk driver gets in a wreck and kills somebody, he’s not responsible. He wouldn’t be drunk if companies didn’t make alcoholic beverages (and yeasts didn’t convert sugars to alcohol), and he wouldn’t be driving if car companies didn’t make cars.
The EPA was the cause of the spill.
Sorry, way down the list and maybe confusing. the response was to trafamadore.
trafamadore, Perhaps if your family had deep roots in that region, you might have a different view. I am intimately familiar with the geography around there. The EPA caused all of the problems in question.
“Actually, the mining company WAS the cause. Just not the immediate cause.”
Just continue jumping through hoops to make this a private sector accident. It is rather entertaining. (oops, replying to a troll. *hitting oneself at fingers with a stick*)
trafamadore I believe dbstealey is referencing the Ex Post Facto Law As well “Impairing the Obligations of Contracts”
And he is correct, they support his statements.
michael
Oh and db, I also took constitution Law.
Mike,
The Constitution is clear and explicit in Art. 1, Sec. 9. It makes no distinction regarding “criminal” actions. In only a dozen words it clearly states:
No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
If the mine was operating legally and according to the regulations in effect at the time it closed, the owners were not at fault. Period. There are many thousands of abandoned mines in the country. The only reason this disaster happened was because of the EPA’s deliberate malfeasance.
Some of the specious logic seen above would also apply to the descendants of slave owners who never oned a slave, but who would presumably be required pay compensation to people who were never slaves themselves, for doing something that was legal and accepted at the time…
…oh, wait. They’re still trying that end run around the Constitution.
The EPA is muddying the waters in more ways than one. They would love to have people discussing a century old mine, instead of discussing their personal culpability — which was clearly predicted. The constitutional question is simply a red herring argument, intended to distract from what appears to be deliberate EPA sabotage of the environment.
EPA bureaucrats are treated very differently from everyone in private industry. Would some of their apologists like to explain that discrepancy? And where does the buck stop? Who was the EPA decision maker? That person should at the very least be out of a job. If not, why not?
According to liberals, private citizens and companies have a legal obligation not only to be perfect, but to be able to predict the results of their actions with 100% accuracy hundreds of years into the future.
On the other hand, no matter how badly govt messes up, it’s always the private sector’s fault.
@ur momisugly dbstealey August 11, 2015 at 10:32 am
HA, tell that to the Hooker Chemical Co. in regard to Love Canal.
“Hooker Chemical involuntarily sold the site (Love Canal) to the Niagara Falls School Board in 1953 for $1, with a deed detailing the presence of dangerous chemical wastes and including a liability limitation clause about the contamination.[1] Long after having taken control of the land the School Board proceeded to have it developed, including construction activity that substantially breached containment structures in a number of ways, allowing previously trapped chemicals to seep out. The resulting breaches combined with particularly heavy rainstorms released and spread the chemical waste, leading to a public health emergency and an urban planning scandal. In what became a test case for liability clauses Hooker Chemical was found to be “negligent” in their disposal of waste, though not reckless in the sale of the land.”
Read more @ur momisugly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal
Samuel Cogar,
Not the same thing. Clearly Hooker knew that the Love Canal site was a major liability, since they included a clause trying to absolve themselves of liability.
But there are many thousands of century old abandoned mines in the country (the U.S. Geological Survey office in Menlo Park, California, provides detailed maps showing numerous abandoned mines). The sort of liability you cite regarding Love Canal is not the same as somemone digging a mine in what was a wilderness.
If we are to judge all past actions the same way, then we would have no choice but to return the continental U.S. to native Americans.
The EPA just loves these distractions. The last thing they want is for people to start asking where the buck stops; who made the final decision to unleash the conaminants along a hundred miles of rivers, and why must taxpayers foot the entire bill? Because the most rational and productive outcome would be for EPA head McCarthy to become unemployed due to this avoidable disaster on her watch. That would go a long way toward making sure this sort of thing would become much less likely in future, no?
dbstealey,
Did you notice this statement, to wit:
““Hooker Chemical involuntarily sold the site ”
Hooker refused to sell the SB the property …. and only did so after they were pressured by the SB and the citizens and then only when the SB gave them a written agreement that the property would only be used as a playground and/or park and no construction would ever occur on it.
But the SB decided to sell it to “housing developers” and reaped million of dollars in doing so. But no Judge or jury will convict a School Board and force them to pay tens of millions in damages because it will be “your tax money” they will be expending.
It was Politically Correct to make Hooker pay.
Samuel,
Sad to hear that. When something is politically correct these days, it seems the Constitution is ignored.
I think the most interesting aspect (and the one most likely to be open to criticism) is the apparent ignoring of the local community group. Perhaps the “We are with the government and are here to help you. Now get out of the way and do as we tell you.” syndrome.
Reminds me of the last government shutdown when the Obama administration decided to barricade open air monuments just to spite anyone that might dare walk through during the standoff. Here in Utah the local communities begged the feds to allow them to keep the national parks open using their own local dollars but the Obama administration refused.
The entire premise behind taking federal ownership in the first place was to guarantee that these national wonders would remain open to everyone. But at the first little hiccup they bar the gates. If they can’t be trusted to do what they claim to do they have no reason to exist. Let Colorado regulate their own mines, and tell the epa to take a hike.
I remember that. There was zero cost to the govt. to keep them open but a point had to be made, and so they were closed. The feds barricaded (among other things) the WWII Memorial on the national mall, but many of the old vets were there for their first (and probably last) visit ever. The old vets pushed aside the barricades and went in anyway to pay their respects to their fallen brothers. The next day the feds had chained together and padlocked all the barricades. Hey, no 90-year-old D-Day survivor gets to dis the prezzy and get away with it.
Yes. That is a huge aspect. The local community had knowledge, mineral assays, and had been working on this. All ignored by the EPA. BIG Government on full display downthread.
Sure, do you have an expert local community group to oversee the lessening of pain when a dentist extracts a tooth, an expert local community group to report worn tires on cars, an expert local community group to take away babies from mothers said to be feeding them improperly — and so on and so on.
I’d suggest that you leave it to the experts. Or are you Ralph Nader writing incognito?
My car tires have to pass a yearly safety inspection, mandated by the state and conducted by a high school dropout at the local tire shop. I don’t have to book a time for a federal Dept of Transportation inspector to come by and approve them.
Many Americans can’t afford to have dental work in this country anymore, and dental “tourism” is booming. Why pay an American dentist $50,000 for the same work you can get done for $1,500 in a Mexican border town?
The sad part is that sickly Mexicans are flooding across the border to the north to get free medical care in US hospitals, while Americans are crossing the border to the south to get affordable care from mexican doctors and dentists.
Because some actions don’t need to be overseen by an “expert local community group” is not evidence that no actions need to be overseen by such groups.
Basic logic, maybe you should try it.
This is the kind of real environmental disaster one might expect EPA to prevent. Devastating incompetence.
What, this spill never happened.
A committee will be struck by the EPA to investigate the actions of the EPA.
For the rest of us, it is business as usual; Good Enough For Government.
Remember when these bureaucrats extort the return on your labour and then use it to do massive damage, its called Investing in your future.
Just another fine buzzword from the progressive parasites, investment to be substituted for infestation?
I’ll bet the hardrives have already crashed, the emails lost, the backup tapes erased, and that Gina is talking to her minions in Colorado via ‘Richard Windsor’.
Was John Beale the one that signed-off on the mine for the EPA?
To have even attempted to mess with any existing dam without an approved dam/containment downstream is insane. But wait, the EPA would have approved that containment. And they were doing the work, and they know what they are doing, and they don’t need any stinking EPA approval they are the EPA.
But I think it is much simpler than that they wanted more control and this was just supposed to be a minor incident (like they said at first) to demonstrate exactly why they need more control – all the way up river to the water coming out of your downspout and running into a sometimes creek.
Guarantee they will AMP-UP all existing “waterway” regulations providing an order of magnitude increase in number and requirements before the “problem” is resolved.
Yes. You know you have leakage through the mine entrance backfill. That means you know there is water backed up behind the ‘plug’. Not to have built a containment cofferdam before futzing with the entrance backfill is criminal negligence.
What do you do with the water that then fills the coffer dam? Release it slowly into a nearby river? It will probably get there by itself over a long period.
Water is a really difficult material to contain and control in large volumes over long times.
The water must be cleaned and treated before it is released.
How much does it cost for a dedicated new sewage plant to process the waste?
Geoff, water is hard to contain, therefore don’t even bother.
Do you really believe that the EPA would let a private contractor get away with that excuse?
Interesting, an engineered minor spill for political gain that got away from them. The fellow upthread is right, the hard drives have already crashed.
And there is an Editorial, predating the event, from a local paper down thread explaining more. Smell worse than a rat, more like a skunk.
It was caused by a youtube. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Now that’s funny.
Notice how the media plays softball w/the EPA — oh, it’s no big deal….
What if one of the evil coal or oil companies had caused this? Hordes of paid greenies would be converging on the town to protest.
Didn’t that coal “cleaning”company ed p paying for lodging and many other expenses over a spill of “toxic solution,” (as declared by the EPA at the time), that was later found to be no worse than bath soap.
If it is of any consolation, mine waste often contains heavy metal bound up as Sulphides. These dont tend to leach or become soluble at the stated pH. Most likely suspended solids that will find their way to the bottom and just end up as a layer of sediment. Eventually covered with natural sediment, rendering the whole thing quite harmless in the long run. Or maybe not, there is not enough information in the article.
EPA was much better at standing around acting mad or getting in the way of the BP gulf oil spill effort. Getting their hands dirty shows just how incompetent they really are. They better stick with fraud science and made up numbers back at headquarters next time. This engineering work is hard and totally disrupts the media manipulation program.
If this was in the UK there would be promotions and big bonuses all round. After all, they only spilled 1.1million gallons – it could have been far worse and they prevented a much larger spill.
this local resident predicted this in a newspaper editorial…
Damn. The EPA should hire somebody like this guy. It appears he really called it.
spetzer86:
You say;
Yes, but it was not difficult for Dave Taylor to have “called it”.
There have been many such events caused in exactly the same way as Dave Taylor describes; for example, we here in Falmouth, Cornwall, UK, remember the 1992 pollution into the Fal estuary from the disused Wheal Jane mine that was exactly as described by Dave Taylor.
The only good thing is that the Fal recovered much more quickly than anyone anticipated.
Richard
It was deliberate.
Yes, it was obviously deliberate. If a retired geologist could predict exactly what would happen, then the EPA had to know, too.
Officers of a taxpaying business who did this would spend time in the penitentiary. Why should EPA bureaucrats be exempt?
It was deliberate.
==============
see. we told you we needed a bigger budget. we didn’t have a big enough team to do the job right.
THANK YOU Steve for posting that image of the letter.
This is beyond unbelievable. Did EPA have any chance of succeeding?
According to the link below that editorial appeared in the print edition on July 30th. Couldn’t find it in the online edition.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/08/letter-to-editor-predicted-colorado-epa-spill-one-week-before-catastrophe-so-epa-could-secure-superfund-cash/