Double standards and pollution continue, while the feds exonerate themselves from blame
Guest essay by Paul Driessen
When a private citizen or company violates rules, misrepresents facts or pollutes a river, government penalties are swift and severe. It’s different when the government lies or screws up.
Two weeks ago, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell testified before Congress on a toxic spill that federal and state agencies unleashed into western state rivers last August. Supervised by officials from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety (DRMS), an Environmental Restoration (ER) company crew excavated tons of rock and debris that had blocked the portal (entrance or adit) to the Gold King Mine above Silverton, Colorado.
The crew kept digging until the remaining blockage burst open, spilling 3,000,000 gallons of acidic water laden with iron, lead, cadmium, mercury and other heavy metals. The toxic flood contaminated the Animas and San Juan Rivers, all the way to Lake Powell in Utah. EPA then waited an entire day before notifying downstream mayors, health officials, families, kayakers, fishermen, farmers and ranchers that the water they were drinking, paddling in, or using for crops and livestock was contaminated.
Ms. Jewell told Congress she was unaware of anyone being fired, fined or even demoted. In fact, federal investigations and reports didn’t hold anyone responsible for the disaster. (Maybe they even got bonuses.) Considering the spill’s severity, the gross incompetence of government officials, their advance knowledge of the dangers, and the way they downplayed and whitewashed their actions, this is intolerable.
EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy did say she was “absolutely, deeply sorry.” But then FEMA denied disaster relief to the Navajos, and EPA sent them emergency water tanks contaminated with oil!
As I explained in a detailed analysis, experts had warned that contaminated water had probably backed up hundreds of feet upward into the mine, creating the risk of a sudden, powerful toxic flashflood. EPA, DRMS and ER’s prior experience with nearby mines meant they personally knew the high risks in advance. In a June 2014 work plan for the planned cleanup, ER itself had warned: “Conditions may exist that could result in a blowout of the blockages and cause a release of large volumes of contaminated mine waters and sediment from inside the mine, which contain concentrated heavy metals.”
Yet they went ahead, with no emergency plans for dealing with a toxic spill. They didn’t even follow their own ill-conceived plan. As the contamination moved downstream, they claimed they had simply “miscalculated” how much water had backed up and insisted they had been “very careful.” Barely a week after the spill, Ms. McCarthy said the river is “restoring itself” to “pre-spill conditions” – something she would never say if a privately owned company had caused similar contamination.
On August 24, EPA issued a preliminary report that can only be called a Tom Sawyer whitewash, designed to absolve the perpetrators of any blame, liability, civil penalty or criminal prosecution.
It says the state and federal personnel at Gold King were “senior mining experts” and “experienced professionals” who have “extensive experience with the investigation and closure of mines.” But their names were all redacted from the summary, and their actions strongly suggest that they had little training or experience in reopening mines or dealing with possible water impoundments and toxic spills.
The EPA/DRMS determination that there was “no or low mine water pressurization” at Gold King was supposedly based on actual observations. However, the EPA review team said it “was not able to identify any calculations made on the possible volume of water that could be held behind the portal plug.”
In fact, the “professionals” simply claimed ongoing mine drainage showed that a pressure buildup was not likely. Wrong. It simply showed that the compacted overburden was able to hold back an enormous volume of water – until they destroyed its structural integrity. They also said a similar excavation at a nearby mine “did not result in a blowout.” But that’s irrelevant. Every mine is unique and must be treated as if a worst-case scenario could unfold. The other mine didn’t have serious water backup; Gold King did.
Perhaps the most blatant example of self-serving excuses is on page 7, which says in relevant part:
“Mine water pressurization data from behind the blockage potentially could have been obtained through a drill hole inserted further back into the [Gold King] Adit from above the mine tunnel. Such a technique was … not used at the [Gold King] Adit [because it] would have been very difficult and expensive … and require much more planning and multiple field seasons to accomplish. Although difficult and therefore expensive and technically challenging, this procedure may have been able to discover the pressurized conditions that turned out to cause the blowout.” [emphasis added]
In truth, the crew could easily have drilled a borehole lined with steel pipe from above the portal into an area behind the blockage, and then used simple instruments to determine the water pressure and extent of water backup, before beginning to dig. They had done this elsewhere and at could have done it at Gold King for less than $75,000, experienced miners told me. It was not “technically challenging.”
These “experienced professionals” guessed but did not test. They simply assumed there was limited water in the mine, and charged blindly ahead. And they did it after bullying their way onto the Gold King premises by threatening its owner with $35,000 per day in fines if he did not allow them on his property.
Their actions were grossly negligent. In fact, they are criminal offenses under the Clean Water Act and other laws that the government routinely uses to fine and jail private citizens and company employees, such as John Pozsgai, Bill Ellen, and employees of Freedom Industries and the Pacific & Arctic Railway. None of these “convicted felons” intended to cause those accidents, and all were “absolutely, deeply sorry” for what happened. Why should the state and federal culprits be treated any differently – get off scot free – after causing far worse environmental damage?
Before the blowout, the Gold King Mine was leaking 206 gallons of acidic, metals-laden but mostly clear water per minute in 2010, 140 gpm in 2011, 13 in August 2014 and 112 in September 2014, just before EPA first began working at the mine portal. On August 5, 2015, it flash-flooded more than 3,000,000 gallons of turmeric-orange, toxic-sludge-laden pollution.
The mine is now leaking 500-900 gallons per minute: 720,000 to 1,300,000 gallons per day – a huge increase in pollution into these important waterways. Until winter set in, most of it was finally being treated before entering Cement Creek, the Animas River and downstream waters.
So we must ask, what was the emergency that “forced” the EPA and DRMS to return to Gold King, demand immediate access to the site – and proceed in such a hasty, negligent manner? Unfortunately, this incident and the whitewashing that followed is too typical of government agencies that have become increasingly dictatorial, unaccountable, and dismissive of other interests, outside expertise, and people’s needs for jobs, minerals, energy and quality living standards.
Today, throughout the Rocky Mountain region, waters are still polluted by metals and minerals that are present in underground mines … along with the gold and silver that have long drawn prospectors, created jobs, and built state and local economies. Hopefully, effluents from all these abandoned mines will soon be minimized via practical, efficient, low-maintenance treatment systems, under legal regimes that do not assign unlimited liability to private sector entities that try to fix these problems.
That will greatly improve water quality in many streams – while suggestions presented in EPA’s otherwise shoddy internal review could do much to prevent a repeat of Gold King, if they are followed.
Meanwhile, Congress and state legislatures should further investigate the Gold King disaster, and compel witnesses to testify under oath. They should also improve relevant laws, ensure that agency personnel are truly qualified to do their tasks, and hold agency incompetents and miscreants accountable.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death.
photos of Gold King Mine blowout and its aftermath
collection #1 and collection #2
I hope someone with authority will take a serious look the the National Forest Service in Va over the past 10 years. The queen bee lost control of her agenda and her proteges picked it up and continued after she got promoted to Oregon rather than canned. Nothing changed except the names. The total incompetence continues to this day. It’s as bad as the global warming scam.
Worked liked this: the queen gets in, brings her followers from out west, forces retirement of long term employees, presses agenda, no room for dissension. End result: very few have any respect for the current National Forest Service. Incompetence now rules the day in the NFS in Va.
Now multiply your observation by every federal dept and you’ll understand the magnitude of what’s actually happened.
EPA – check
VA – check
secret service – check
Treasury – check
I could go on
IRS, double check
I don’t understand how anyone could possibly think it a good idea to pull the plug without knowing how much of what was piled up behind it. I’m not going to accuse someone else’s government agency of malice, but none of this makes sense.
There is no law.
Under environmental statutes.
The Legislation is written with to cover all angles, so the enforcers are given broad discretionary powers.
The enforcer envisioned by legislators is a well qualified, person with experience and expertise in the industry.
Except government does not pay for such expertise, and bureaucracies have no space for skilled individuals.
What we get is this situation.
The law(Offence) is whatever the bureaucrat wants it to be.
There is no defence, because the statute gives the official full authority.
And the only type of person attracted to such low paying positions are junior Cartmans. (Southpark).
Who invariably rise to be Chief Enforcer by longevity.
Most senior in arrogance and incompetence.
Good enough for government, of course no one will be held accountable, those draconian regulations?
They only apply to the little people.
Classic Kleptocracy.
The law protects the thieves, punishes the productive.
Government by fools and bandits for the benefit of fools and bandits
The EPA isn’t holding any of the site contractors responsible for anything because they would then squeal about the EPA people directing them.
They all go down or no one goes down.
There are gold regions like Australia’s Ballarat and Bendigo where old mines went as deep as they could “until the water beat them”. Pumps were not so good then. One result is that there is a deeper continuation of these world class gold deposits, confirmed by later drilling, but most prospective operators have voluntarily declined to mine deeper because of the danger of encountering an old shaft filled with 100 metres or more of water. These can be like an explosive if they are met by a new tunnel in progress. Too dangerous. Too few old records of adequate accuracy.
The above cities have sat on these old underground mines since 1900 or so with not a great deal of inconvenience, compared to the value of their mined gold, which played a large part of setting Australia on the path of a prosperous nation after the 1860s. There is not a great need to fiddle with them. If it is not broken, don’t try to fix it.
That is not quite so, because there is a hard problem ahead. Suppose there is a vertical shaft that has passed its use by date. How do you plug the top of it, so that nothing or nobody can fall down? It is really quite hard and I do not know the answer. Concrete plugs have been used, but they might not sit there with space below them for the many centuries needed. You can’t rely on steel girders – they rust.
In the mining industry we spend a lot of experience, thought, time and money trying to head off accidents. This seems not to have been the case with guvmint people at Gold King. Sadly, in years to come, lives will be lost when amateurs try to intrude, “for the common good” into topics of specialisation and the results of thought and experience.
How deep are those mines? Could you just start rolling in boulders until it fills up?
the Massive Ordnance Penetrator; 30,000-pound (13,608 kg) “bunker buster”
Not only Govn’t but left leaning alarmist media too. This was spat out all over the alarmist Australian MSM.
http://www.smh.com.au/breaking-news-business/brazil-declares-emergency-after-mine-spill-20151118-46frv.html
A joint venture between Vale Brazil and BHP Billiton Australia.
And nothing, I repeat *NOTHING* in the Australian MSM about this EPA “mishap”. Double standards indeed!
The problem is that green activists in any government environmental organization actively campaign against the professionals in those organizations who actually know what they are doing. The result is you end up with organizations top heavy with clueless bureaucrats, motivated solely by highly flawed greenie theory and not by hard earned experience.
All over the western world it is the same, in the UK it is the Environment Agency, who routinely blame disasters caused by their own utter incompetence on supposed climate change.
As this report indicates, trying to find those responsible for the disasters is almost impossible. Anyhow, how dare we irrelevant taxpayers suggest government employees be fired for gross incompetence – that’s just now how the system ‘works’.
ooh!!!
look! , look!
A Volkswagen
https://youtu.be/kHD5nd3QLTg
Wow, that’s a lot of liberals !!
https://youtu.be/Dk0hl4lffDU
EU President – “Global Warming” being used as a vehicle to suppress human freedom.
Goes on to explain that suppressing human Freedom is the task of the EU
Auto – mods, please note – with tongue only very slightly in cheek!
That’s Vaclav Klaus, who never served in any 6 month EU presidency. –AGF
As a concerned English outsider who visited Durango, Silvertown, the Animas River area and the down stream locations before the catastrophe I can only say that the official report is a classic of its kind. It should be required reading, together with the appropriate videos, in all schools. This, the teacher should say, is what this nation has come to. Mendacious self-serving whitewash laid on by the bucketload.
I had a little experience of gold mining some years ago. Any one and everyone in the business knows that it involves highly toxic heavy metals as well, plus the normal unavoidable build up of water.
A possible explanation: The people who unplugged the dam knew what that were doing. And somewhere there was an instruction to do so. No expert in the field would have risked his (her?) own neck by taking such an obviously huge risk of creating a major contamination of an important waterway. Especially as river levels were low.
This is worth every tourist business, water user, and interested party affected by the spiillage getting together and unleashing a major investigation into who told who what and when.
If the employees truly did not know what might happen then the people who hired and trained them need to be penalised for gross dereliction of their duty of care of their staff, some of whom could have been killed.
The excavation crew were digging looking for signs of water. When they found water, they had no plans for what to do about it. They stood around asking each other “what do we do now?”, then they ran away.
The contractors and those who contracted them should be hauled through the court system.
Big government (socialism) only tries to do GOOD for the peons. Therefore this incident should not have been reported in the press since it besmirched the government and makes it harder for the government to do GOOD. Continue down the route we are going and in fifty years all news will be GOOD news.
Eugene WR Gallun
Socialism only pretends to do good for the peons. In reality it is nothing more than PR used by those who are getting rich off of it, to placate the masses.
Any outrage and protests by Greenpeace?
That’s what I was wondering. Have any environmental groups protested the EPA, or is the money, the politics, and their cozy relationship with government more important to them than the environment?
A search of their website, and a search by googling “greenpeace” and “gold king mine” showed nothing. That ought to be investigated – maybe a chunk of money hit one of their accounts just as GP would have been picking up the story.
Yet another reason to totally reassess the relationship between the federal government, the states and the people. One of the few peaceful ways remaining is for the States to call for an Article V convention to consider amendments to the Constitution.
In the case of this outrage, and others where the bureaucracy has simply run amok, it used to be that the simple fact that there was only so much tax money in the till served to restrain the scope of government. But since the creation of the federal reserve, coupled with the unlimited power to tax incomes (there is no limit given in the Sixteenth Amendment), government has increasingly just created the money it wanted out of thin air by various means.
The first way to restrain government is via the simple restraint of limiting the total amount of money it can spend. That tends to focus its priorities. How to do that must be the first order of business for an Article V convention.
“EPA then waited an entire day before notifying downstream mayors, health officials, families, kayakers, fishermen, farmers and ranchers that the water they were drinking, paddling in, or using for crops and livestock was contaminated.”
That alone adds to criminal negligence.
The EPA’s actions aren’t all that dissimilar from the BLM’s (that’s Bureau of Land Management, not Black Lives Matter) regarding western rangeland fires. In recent years federal fire managers have set backfires and mismanaged wildfires such that they kill ranchers’ cattle and endanger their properties — not to mention the hundreds of thousands of acres scorched and rendered useless to cattle and wildlife — with nary so much as an apology, and always absolving themselves of any responsibility. But if a rancher’s backfire gets out of control, let the prosecutions roll.
Currently living in Colorado and having worked previously in the mining industry this whole incident exposes the gross incompetence of government regulatory agencies. They claim to be experts but lack intelligence in anticipating even basic problems or concerns. The fact that they didn’t listen to the advise & concerns of the local mine experts just confirms their incompetence. There is absolutely no excuse for this mentality and behavior. These people need to be prosecuted to maximum extent of the law.
Richvs,
At worst expect a Lois Lerner punishment by a Democrat led State and Federal Government.
Dan Kurt
Actually, I think that EPA is not immune to lawsuits and such for their behavior. They should be sued under section 207 of CERCLA. It is tried in front of a Federal Judge, no jury. EPA is and has been the #1 PRP at CERCLA sites and they always pay.
The most terrifying words in the English language:
“I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
Reblogged this on Climate Change Sanity and commented:
Reblogging this posting on how the EPA blew it and let millions of gallons of polluted mine water go into Western rivers and nobody has been arrested, fined or even fired. The following are quotes from the posting to give you some idea of what is going on.
“When a private citizen or company violates rules, misrepresents facts or pollutes a river, government penalties are swift and severe. It’s different when the government lies or screws up.
Their actions were grossly negligent. In fact, they are criminal offenses under the Clean Water Act and other laws that the government routinely uses to fine and jail private citizens and company employees, such as John Pozsgai, Bill Ellen, and employees of Freedom Industries and the Pacific & Arctic Railway. None of these “convicted felons” intended to cause those accidents, and all were “absolutely, deeply sorry” for what happened. Why should the state and federal culprits be treated any differently – get off scot free – after causing far worse environmental damage?”
cbdakota
i posted weeks ago that Congresscritter Bruce Westerman has filed a complaint with the Colorado professional engineering board re the EPA’s apparent practicing of engineering without a license regarding the work at Gold King Mine.