The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) named 10 sites to the Superfund program’s National Priorities List, reaching nine states plus Puerto Rico.
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The Bonita Peak Mining District site consists of historic and ongoing releases from mining operations in three drainages: Mineral Creek, Cement Creek and Upper Animas; which converge into the Animas River near Silverton, Colorado.
Environmental and tribal activists welcomed the government’s announcement Wednesday that it had designated the Gold King Mine a Superfund site, advancing the cleanup of an area contaminated by a multimillion-gallon toxic spill previous year.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency formally added the inactive Gold King Mine and 47 other nearby mining-related sites to the Superfund list.
A Jennings shipyard is among 10 sites added to the Superfund list on Wednesday.
But when the EPA accidentally triggered a 3-million-gallon wastewater spill from the Gold King Mine in August 2015, Silverton and surrounding San Juan County got behind the Superfund listing.
The EPA estimates that 880,000 pounds of metals flowed into the Animas River in Colorado, including arsenic, cadmium, copper, lead, mercury, nickel and zinc.
Esper said Silverton could become a research center for cleaning up leaking mines across the nation.
“People I thought never would be supporting Superfund totally reversed”, he said.
Utilities and farmers temporarily stopped drawing water from the rivers for drinking and irrigation.
The cleanup will be complex and could take years or even decades. The Navajo Nation also has sued, the AP reports, and the state of Utah is likely to file as well. The state Department of Public Health and Environment said they are “committed to working closely” with the EPA through the process.
“The country hasn’t made much progress on fixing abandoned mines across the West”. But Interior officials said they found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing.
EPA will start an investigation at the site and seek comments from public before selecting a cleanup plan.
“In the past year, my team and I have worked to hold the EPA accountable”, Tipton said in a statement.
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Congress has conducted multiple hearings.
