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.
“Yes, it was obviously deliberate. If a retired geologist could predict exactly what would happen, then the EPA had to know, too.”
Nah, geologists have been ignored for eternity. We are used to it. Ask one about this “global warming” thing.
One of the terrible things about big governments is that they destroy with impunity and on a grand scale.
Rocks and mountains leech all the time. This is a very fractured range..
All that is missing is that the river hasn’t started on fire.
The EPA analysis of Animas River water can be found here
http://www.epaosc.org/sites/11082/files/PreliminaryData_08092015.pdf
Unsurprisingly, the local Democrats have been fighting to stop drilling injection wells for use in fracking and wastewater disposal.
http://www.durangoherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?aid=/20140909/NEWS01/140909524&template=mobileart
La Plata county was one of the first in the state to enact their own county level regulations to try to tie up new drilling, and the Democrat candidate for the local board wanted to be able to enact a blanket ban on fracking and wastewater disposal.
For decades, colleagues have tossed around the best way to plug an underground mine entrance, especially one that goes straight down vertical.
Over periods of centuries, it is possible that there is no way. There is an associated problem of marking the site so that in future centuries people will know that there is a deep, concealed hole in the ground.
Contributions welcomed for novel ideas to plug and mark old mines.
How about drilling an injection well for waste water disposal, on site, in the shaft, so that the seep has a way to drain off harmlessly?
EPA botched it, that’s the point here. EPA doesn’t give a d*m to get things on track again.
It’s a tunnel that was closed at the entrance from collapse (common situation) and they opened it up with a backhoe and also tore into a retaining wall that held back a lake of acid water. Mine tunnel or not, there would still be an acidic water seep there and with heavy metals in solution. EPA just concentrated the seep into an assault on the rivers instead of the slow discharge that the whole region has from this huge hydrothermally altered and mineralized volcanic complex.
Wow, that’s a tough one. Especially is cost is an issue, which it always is.
I’ve wondered whether acid-resistant polymer concrete could be adapted to use in mines.
Call a mining engineer, if they have not all left the country to pursue careers elsewhere and where the same commodities come from today.
The way I understand it the acid is a byproduct of the water sitting in the hole, breaking down iron pyrite over time. If they have proper drainage the acid never gets a chance to leach out of the rock.
More spill data
http://epaosc.org/sites/11082/files/Data%20Update%2008082015.pdf
http://nmpoliticalreport.com/9416/six-things-to-know-about-the-animas-river-spill-environment/
EPA’s motto du jour, courtesy Rahm Emanuel : don’t let this crisis go to waste
Has anybody here seen a statement from the greenies concerning this catastrophe?
I live a 100 kms from a similar mine. Down stream is a regional city. Newspaper reports on Government discussions suggest the city would just be totally evacuated. 250,000 people would simply have to move. I cannot believe those idiots in kayaks in the photo. That sludge may kill them on skin exposure.
Just where is the “foot on the throat”, the outrage, the demands for money and compensation?
Heads need to roll on this, beginning with Gina’s.
Is the EPA going to pay 20 billion in compensation, restore the river (s) and riverbanks and pay punitive damages. Is it going to give free counseling to those effected?
“includes levels of arsenic, lead, cadmium, aluminum and copper”
Sounds a bit like the flu shot.
That fine would be at least $35,000 per day if a citizen or small company had an accident like that. The cost in this case is about $35,000 per minute.
The EPA used to do good work – clearing up real air and water pollution. However, just like any other bureaucracy it wants to grow despite already meeting its mission. So that’s when farmer’s ponds become “wetlands” and CO2 becomes a pollutant to justify their growth. And the paperwork for any construction project becomes onerous as well protect the darling little fishes that can’t evolve to meet the new environment.
Isn’t there even one US attorney prepared to organise a class action – “The People v EPA” – to sue the EPA for hundreds of millions of dollars … a token $1,000 for environmental damage and the remaining hundreds of millions as punitive damages for gross negligence?
If this were a company they would be headed for bankruptcy and the company officers would be headed for jail.
Sounds about par for the course from the agency that declared CO2 to be a pollutant.
What will the bathtub ring look like from that?
I’ll ask it again. What notice of workplan was given to local governments and the public prior to this EPA project?
Can’t help myself but this brings to mind a joke that was told in school yards close to sixty years ago. Sit back it takes awhile to tell a joke from simple times when most kids were familiar with rural life.
three kids want to enter their pig at the County Fair but no matter how much they feed it, the darn pig just doesn’t gain weight. So one afternoon they come up with the bright idea that, clearly if the pig couldn’t eliminate all that food as dung he’d have to gain weight. They have no problem coming up with a cork…Ah but who is going to put the cork in? Well Nobody wants to do THAT but finally one of the kids hits on the idea that his uncle has a pet monkey. They could train the monkey to the task and none of them would have to get their hands dirty.
Sure enough the monkey takes right to the training and they get the job accomplished.
The pig gains tremendous weight having no way to eliminate waste and wins first place at the County Fair!
Wellll, the boys figure that pig might really like to take a crap and as usual nobody wants to take the cork out so another round of training for the monkey. The day comes when its time to send in the monkey and he does his job just as he’s been taught to but when he pulls the plug its like there’s an explosion of crap and the boys are blown down. They are rescued and as adults are trying to determine what has gone on they interview the first two boys and hear that all they saw was tons and tons of crap filling the sky before they blacked out. The third kid remembers more:
“That poor monkey tryin’ to put the cork back in”
That EPA backhoe operator probably knows how the monkey felt!
It is a little ironic that for each federal agency participating in the round robin of CAGW climate change scare media blitz there is another round robin of agency service blunders and failed policy over reach, i.e. EPA, VA, IRS, State Dept., etc. The citizens and taxpayers lose in both round robins.
Ok. I still don’t get it. ferd berple is absolutely correct. Why is the regulator doing remediation? They are clearly in a conflict of interest. Their only participations should be review, permitting and compliance.
The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission in their former incarnation as the Atomic Energy Control Board used to do legacy case remediation on behalf of the government, especially whenever there was a court order for relief, but this was stopped in the early 80s upon intervener court action. Of course this can’t happen in this case because all the large interveners are already in a RICO relationship with the EPA.
State and local authorities, the Animus River Stakeholder’s Group and the Navajo Nation, who are insisting they will reclaim every penny of loss from the EPA for this incident, should not expect any significant support from any of the big green organizations here.
I think they are still trying to figure out how to blame this on bush
Why is the regulator doing remediation?
Because sabotage.
Their only participations should be review, permitting and compliance.
Not enough room for graft doing it the right way.