The EPA, which released the results after 2 a.m. Eastern time under increasing political pressure, said its analysis shows the heavy metals returned to “pre-event levels” after the plume passed in the Animas River between Silverton, Colorado, and the downstream municipal water intake for Durango.
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That was bound to change after 3 million gallons of toxic water poured out of the closed Gold King Mine on August. 5, polluting Colorado’s Animas River with lead, arsenic, cadmium and other heavy metals in a sickly yellow plume that stretched for a 100 miles and drawing global attention. In the absence of an owner, the federal government was working with local residents and the state to do limited mitigation work in the area around the Gold King mine – one of a cluster of old and polluted mines perched more than 11,000ft high – when the spill occurred.
The Gold King Mine hasn’t operated since 1923. The workers dislodged some material, turning the steady flow of contaminated water into a torrent.
The mines can pose “serious threats to human health and the environment”, the EPA says on its website, so the agency initiates and supervises the examination of these sites and tries to maintain or clean them up.
And Dietrich said he would advise that anyone planning to run the river bring their own water – good advice no matter the circumstances, he said.
Earthworks is a Washington-based nonprofit environmental group that works with communities near mines. He said more testing is needed.
Those half a million mines, Earthworks says, have produced 50 billion tons of untreated, unreclaimed mining wastes on public and private land.
The spill released heavy-metal-contaminated water into the Animas River, causing concerns for water quality as it moves downstream from Colorado and into New Mexico and Utah. The higher the concentrations, the higher the cost of removing heavy metals.
The closure continues as the EPA monitors the pollution levels. “This is critical to our drinking water, our infrastructure, the health and safety of our people”.
“There are some communities that exclusively rely on the San Juan River for their drinking water”, says Navajo Nation Vice President Jonathan Nez, adding tribal authorities plan to sue the EPA. He even drank a glass of river water.
The EPA, through a contractor, was trying to clean up the mess, and in the process, allowed the 3 million gallons of wastewater that had accumulated to escape from holding ponds and into Cement Creek, then into the Animas River.
“Sen. Heinrich is planning on introducing legislation to reform hardrock mining regulations when we’re back in session in September”, his spokeswoman, Whitney Potter, told me in an email today. “We want to make sure that all that data is quality controlled, that we put it in a context that people can understand”. McCarthy ordered EPA crews to cease field investigations of these mines nationwide while the spill is investigated. The EPA first said 1 million gallons had rushed out. The total cost to date is more than $100m, according to the US Geological Service.
It said the EPA was in charge of providing information on the spill and the information it had provided so far has been “factual”.
EPA officials did not immediately respond to Associated Press questions about long-term dangers, but environmental regulators in downstream New Mexico warned that sediments get kicked up by storms and high water, so it’s crucial to determine where contamination settles.
How concerning was the Gold King Mine before the leak?
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Environmental Restoration LLC posted on its website in response to inquiries from the Post-Dispatch and other media confirming it was “onsite at the time of the release from the Gold King Mine”.
