The 100-mile-long plume has since dissipated, its heavy metals settling into riverbeds, during the waste’s 300-mile journey into Lake Powell, where the flow joins the Colorado River that supplies water to the Southwest. The agency says the water contains lead, arsenic, cadmium and other heavy metals, but has still not disclosed what impact the spill will have on river users downstream, like those in the Navajo Nation.
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“EPA is in it for the long haul”, she said.
That act established funding for states to clean up long-abandoned mines, like the Gold King (which closed in the 1920s). EPA officials said they were seeking details on what the stop-work order means. The toxic plume affected communities in Colorado, New Mexico and Utah.
The technical letter describes how the EPA will create a scenario where “the water will find a way out and exfiltrate uncontrollably through connected abandoned shafts, drifts, raises, fractures…contamination may actually increase due to the disturbance and flushing action within the workings”. “He might as well stick 15 cigarettes in his mouth and light them all at the same time and take a picture about how that’s good for you”.
Officials in Colorado have reopened the Animas River to boating after 3 million gallons of contaminated wastewater laced with heavy metals spilled into the popular waterway.
Gold King is one of a cluster of old mines sending pollution downhill from tunnels dug 11,000 feet high in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains. “Not only are we on call to process millions of gallons of water per day within a week from today, ” Mills continued, “but we know how critical it is for the general public, regulators, and site owners to understand that this capability exists to address instant disasters and hard water treatment challenges”. “As far as I’m concerned, they should be paying San Juan County, Farmington, New Mexico and all the people here lots and lots of money”.
“Those are some of the longer-term issues that affect humans as well as wildlife,” New Mexico Environment Secretary Ryan Flynn said.
Truckloads of drinking water are headed to the Navajo Nation where a mine spill upstream of the San Juan River has residents anxious about contamination. The safest solution would be to install a treatment plant that would clean the water from Gold King and three other nearby mines.
Shiprock Chapter Farm Board Representative Joe Ben Jr. said it’s been chaotic since the spill in Colorado, in part because there are no testing results for the river once it crosses onto the reservation.
Durango’s utilities engineer, Matt Holden, says the city is “proceeding carefully to ensure the absolute safety of our drinking water”. “Now it’s nearly like your legs were cut out from under you”. That’s at the root of a lot of worry for farmers in Shiprock, who fear the worst for their crops. Crews are treating the water in these ponds with caustic soda (sodium hydroxide) and lime (calcium oxide), which are very basic in pH.
Some experts downplayed the damage.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has made a major mess of the Animas River in Colorado and beyond, and now, some analysts are suggesting it may have even been a deliberate plot to bilk taxpayers and shut down mining in the region. FITSNews, meanwhile, asked: “Does anybody with more than two brain cells seriously still believe this disaster was an ‘accident?'” Infowars, ZeroHedge, Ace of Spades, and numerous other outlets have seized on the revelations to cast doubt on EPA claims as well.
“It’s probably perfectly fine”.
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During the 1990s, the now-defunct Gold King Mine Corp. completed $10 million in exploration, Hennis said, including 400,000 ounces of gold and 4 million ounces of silver.
