Among the metals detected in the sludge were arsenic, cadmium, copper, beryllium, iron, lead, mercury, and zinc. “This has been on a prioritization list…so there are plans for many of these mines that people have not heard about”, she said. Any of these chemicals or metals alone, or combined as they were in the waters in the Gold King Mine, could be risky, but only if a person were exposed to them in particular ways and in sufficient amounts.
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“There was a large, gaping hole, and I won’t even guess at the dimensions, and some of the debris from whatever was holding back the water”, Reyes said as he described the release site. “Then the water can’t get through and eventually the pressure builds”.
As of January 2015, the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) inventory of abandoned mines on public lands contained over 48,100 sites and 89,500 features as of January 2015. Water is captured and treated at a system of pounds before being discharged to Cement Creek.
Evidently when the EPA is at fault for an environmental disaster, the healing process takes only a week. Authorities now confirm that the water is safe to drink, and the river reopened for recreational use on Friday afternoon. Some mayors of cities first learned of the danger from news reports, not the EPA itself.
Among the 13 questions is Martinez’s concern about the timeliness of the EPA’s alert about the spill. Agency officials said they were turning to a long-term monitoring strategy focusing on sediment and what, if any, steps can be taken to deal with it.
Previous mine owners in the region responded to contaminated runoff by installing a plug in an existing drainage way called the American Tunnel, effectively returning outflows at the Sunnyside Mine to pre-mining levels.
The EPA and Interior Department are both investigating.
In Colorado alone there are an estimated 4,650 abandoned mine sites now leaking toxic waste.
Taylor’s review of the EPA data found other troubling areas.
Some water was still pouring out of the hole, which the EPA had diverted toward various pools for treatment. “This gutless and incompetent agency must be held accountable for releasing 3 million gallons of toxic waste into our rivers”. Taylor wrote he believed that was EPA’s real goal all along. Heads would be rolling.
“The citizens, businesses and people relying on the vitality of the Animas River deserve complete, transparent and expeditious accountability on this matter from the EPA, and full compensation and reparations as the EPA would and has exacted from private business entities in similar instances”.
If Congress isn’t careful, it could end up rewarding EPA’s bad behavior.
The Interior Department inspector general also singled out Browner for misrepresenting the White House’s blue-ribbon science panel, which opposed a six-month drilling moratorium, and exposed how she butchered their conclusions to justify the administration’s preordained policy agenda.
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Leaders of the Navajo Nation found the EPA response to the damage of their critical watershed to be so abysmal that they have mounted a lawsuit against the agency.
