[Tanada]

I am not vindictive or anything, but the people directly involved in this disaster should lose their jobs and be fined heavily. That is what would happen to anyone else causing such an accident and whats good for the goose is good for the gander in my book.

Environmental Protection Agency workers accidentally triggered the spill of a million gallons of mine waste water into the Colorado River, the agency said Thursday.

Colorado Public Radio reports EPA workers were at the Gold King Mine using heavy equipment to investigate contamination at the site. Southwest Colorado has many abandoned mines, reports CPR, and workers have been in the area for years trying to rehabilitate the sites.

“We typically respond to emergencies, we don’t cause them. But this is just something that happens when we’re dealing with mines sometimes,” said Dave Ostrander, EPA Region 8 Director of Emergency Preparedness.

The spill happened on Wednesday, but the agency didn’t tell anyone about it until Thursday.

The Associated Press reports the EPA says it’s too early to determine health risks, but that they’ve not found any so far.

Federal environmental officials say it’s too early to know whether heavy metals that spilled into a river from a Colorado mine pose a health risk.

The Environmental Protection Agency said Friday that water samples still are being tested but so far no hazard has been detected. The EPA says lead, arsenic and other heavy metals were found in the Animas River in Colorado after 1 million gallons of mustard-colored waste water surged out of the mine.

The EPA says it has no way to get the discolored water out of the river and that it will eventually dissipate. It wasn’t clear when that will happen.

Officials say an EPA-led cleanup crew accidentally triggered the spill Wednesday.

The Animas flows from Colorado into New Mexico. Tests also were being done there, but results weren’t known.

As of Friday evening, CPR reports, the mine is still leaking water that contains “lead, arsenic, along with cadmium, aluminum, copper and calcium and other pollutants.” The EPA is building a settling pond to collect further discharge.

The Associated Press also reports that the spill has reached northern New Mexico where city officials have cut off the river’s access to water treatment facilities.

A yellow sludge spilling from a shuttered gold mine into a southwestern Colorado river has reached northern New Mexico.

San Juan County Emergency Management Director Don Cooper says the plume arrived in the city of Aztec on Friday night and Farmington on Saturday morning.

Officials in both cities shut down the river’s access to water treatment plants and say the communities have a 90-day supply of water and other water sources to draw from.

About 1 million gallons of waste water from Colorado’s Gold King Mine began spilling Wednesday when a cleanup crew supervised by the Environmental Protection Agency accidentally breached a debris dam that had formed inside the mine.

No health hazard has been detected, but tests were being analyzed. Federal officials say the spill contains heavy metals including lead and arsenic

Cooper told the Daily Times in Farmington, “It’s not going to look pretty, but it’s not a killer.” He said people shouldn’t panic because the EPA told San Juan County officials that the spill will not harm humans and that the primary pollutants are iron and zinc.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment told several national news outlets that the spill’s impact on the environment wasn’t clear. There are no fish in the Cement Creek Watershed because of a long history of poor water quality.

[GHung]

Links?

[Tanada]

Links?

http://www.denverpost.com/environment/c ... ntaminated

http://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/ ... exico-utah

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/e01d7fbc ... new-mexico

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... river.html

[ROCKMAN]

Interesting that the EPA considered the waste an environmental hazard before the spill and thus jusified budgeting many millions to clean it up. But now that it has been discharged into the river..,no problamo. So why didn't they dump it into the river years ago and save the tax payers the money?

[Cog]

They won't be fired, they will be transferred and promoted.

[Plantagenet]

They won't be fired, they will be transferred and promoted.

Its very hard to fire people from government jobs. I just read an article about a NYC government worker being fired after 18 months of not showing up for work---it took that long for his "manager" to notice and wonder where he was ---and only then did they figure out the government employee had died a year and a half ago.

Still, they couldn't fire him just because he was dead. First, they had to go to go an "administrative law" court and convince the judge that his work performance wasn't acceptable. At the administrative court hearing the judge agreed to fire the dead man, but only on the basis that hadn't shown up for the legal hearing.

NYC-city-tried-to-fire-man-for-missing-work-because-he-was-dead

[Peak_Yeast]

I think his poor permance can be excused.. I challenge anyone to try working hard and meet expectations while they are dead - and for that matter keeping meeting times at the court...

I think his lawyer should declare force-majoure concerning not meeting at the court nor doctor...

[Synapsid]

Tanada,

The guys working in abandoned mines are a lot like firemen: every time they enter an old, abandoned mine they are risking their lives. They may or may not have enough information to allow them to know what they'll encounter.

I worked in several old mines in southern Colorado, not all that far from the area mentioned here. We had the usual hardhats and helmet lamps, sniffers for various gases, a compressor helicoptered in for blowing air into the mines, and photocopies of the mine maps on file at the County seat. We had rubber boots because the mine drainage would dissolve leather ones, and we always left one crew member outside the adit, to report catastrophe if we didn't make it back out. We still almost lost a man (half the crew were men, you see).

The map for one mine showed a single gallery going back about 50 feet. As we made our way in we passed a short side gallery that wasn't on the map, and after 70 more feet we found ourselves at an overlook showing at least three more levels below us, "at least" because that was all the farther our lamps penetrated the water that nearly filled the mine. All this in a mine that on the map was a single gallery maybe 50 feet long. (Think of firemen entering a burning house they know nothing about.) My guess is that once they found ore the miners stopped mapping and just dug.

The third day we went into the mine we reached the overlook and saw no water at all--something had shifted, we left quietly and never entered that mine again.

I don't know from the article if any of the EPA workers had entered the mine or not, nor if they had maps and logs giving accurate information about the berm that was holding in the mine drainage that they released by accident. I do know that you don't always have the information you need when dealing with old mines.

[jupiters_release]

The Associated Press reports the EPA says it’s too early to determine health risks, but that they’ve not found any so far.

Federal environmental officials say it’s too early to know whether heavy metals that spilled into a river from a Colorado mine pose a health risk.

The Environmental Protection Agency said Friday that water samples still are being tested but so far no hazard has been detected.

The EPA says lead, arsenic and other heavy metals were found in the Animas River in Colorado after 1 million gallons of mustard-colored waste water surged out of the mine.

No health hazard has been detected, but tests were being analyzed. Federal officials say the spill contains heavy metals including lead and arsenic

[PrestonSturges]

If the only thing holding the water back was a pile of debris, I don't think it was going to just sit there even if nobody disturbed it.

This sounds like small potatoes compared to many abandoned coal mine blow outs where the flooded mine collapses. Coal mine blowouts are often >10,000,000 gallons and very toxic and acidic.

https://youtu.be/qCT2n1xvJPA

[dohboi]

The company that first piled up this toxic pile of sludge is the one primarily to blame. Once it was accumulated, it was basically an 'accident' waiting to happen.

[ROCKMAN]

dohboi - The situation is actually far more complicated then the headlines indicate. It has been a very bad situation being mishandled by the EPA for decades. Apparently the locals objected to the feds declaring it a Super Fund site for fear it would chase away tourists...the main economic activity in the area: Gold mines in the hills around Gold King were the primary income and economy for the region until the last closure of a mine around Silverton in 1991. Prior to the spill, the Upper Animas water basin had become devoid of fish, because of the environmental impact of regional mines such as Gold King. Other plant and animal species were adversely affected in the watershed before the Gold King Mine breach, as well. In the 1990s, sections of the Animas had been nominated by the EPA as a Superfund site for clean-up of pollutants from the Gold King Mine and other mining operations along the river, but lack of community support prevented its listing. Locals had feared that the label of a Superfund site would reduce the tourism in the area, the largest remaining source of income left in the region after the closure of the metal mines. Officials have noted that the mine is only one of 22,000 abandoned mines in the state:

"While state and federal leaders focused on the Gold King Mine blowout and downriver contamination, three adjacent mines still are leaking more than 540 gallons per minute of waste laced with heavy metals into Animas River headwaters. And mine owners squared off Tuesday over who, beyond the Environmental Protection Agency, is ultimately responsible. EPA officials said the initial 3 million-gallon deluge from Gold King is dissipating but kept the Animas River closed. They declined again — six days after an EPA crew triggered the blowout — to release data on contamination levels of cadmium, lead, arsenic, zinc, manganese and other heavy metals.

Gov. John Hickenlooper was in Durango on Tuesday, and EPA chief Gina McCarthy is scheduled to be there and in New Mexico on Wednesday. But the culprit for the continuing acid discharge — which has long since killed headwaters fish — still wasn't clear in thick EPA and state records on the Sunnyside, Mogul, and Red and Bonita mines. Gold King owner Todd Hennis, president of San Juan Corp., said Tuesday in an interview that backed-up wastewater inside the Sunnyside Mine is to blame for Wednesday's blowout. Sunnyside Gold Corp. is owned by Kinross, a $2.3 billion company that runs mines worldwide. "It is our belief that, when Sunnyside put bulkheads inside the Sunnyside Mine, they redistributed the flow of wastewater out of other mine portals. It is a bad flow, very high in the nasty minerals, very acidic," said Hennis, who also owns the Mogul Mine and vowed full cooperation with the EPA on the Gold King cleanup.

Hennis called on Kinross to voluntarily install a water-treatment plant for $5 million to $20 million on Cement Creek to prevent further harm to the Animas and downriver communities. "Please, Kinross, step up," Hennis said. "Do a voluntary deal with the EPA. You need to set up a treatment plant to deal with the water impacts of the bulkheads inside the Sunnyside Mine." Kinross officials — their North American operations are based in Denver — flatly rejected the notion that underground tunnels are connected. "Sunnyside Gold Corporation is not involved whatsoever. It never owned or operated Gold King and did not take part in work being done there," company reclamation manager Larry Perino said. "Sunnyside Mine workings have no physical connection to the Gold King, and such a connection never existed. Sunnyside is not the cause of the water buildup at Gold King."

Hennis retorted: "They are lying. They leased the Gold King extension in 1989. They mined it in 1990 from Sunnyside — and then left everything open. The bulkheads at Sunnyside caused mine pools that extend into Gold King." Colorado officials in 1995 agreed to let Sunnyside install bulkhead plugs to try to control acid drainage. Once ranking among the state's largest underground gold mines, Sunnyside employed hundreds of workers before closing in 1991. A legal agreement between Colorado and the previous owner of Sunnyside, Canada-based Echo Bay, also led to significant cleanup work along Cement Creek — until a water treatment plant closed in 2003. The agreement waived Colorado's legal ability to prosecute Sunnyside for bulkhead leakage.

Whether or not mine tunnels are connected — U.S. Geological Survey experts and state mining regulators said Tuesday this remains uncertain — a continuing combined flow of 540 to 740 gallons a minute of acid drainage from the Mogul, Sunnyside, and Red and Bonita mines still is degrading Animas headwaters even as the mustard-yellow plume from the Gold King blowout dissipates. This is in addition to a continuing Gold King discharge, estimated at 500 to 700 gallons a minute — wastewater now partially treated in emergency settling ponds. "That water (from the three other mines) that is still coming out of these mines is loaded with dissolved metals. Even though the river now looks clear, it is loaded," said Bruce Stover, director of Colorado's abandoned mines reclamation program, who has worked on problems with old mines for 30 years. "These mines are draining as we speak. We had a disaster last week — a surging amount of water coming out. That same amount of water is coming out over six months and harming the Animas. That water is coming out 24/7," Stover said, adding there are 29 other leaking old mines in the Silverton area. "The discharge of all those mines is continuing. Unless the EPA, locals and state work on the problem, there will not be any solution to what is happening on the Animas," Stover said.

[Cog]

The company that first piled up this toxic pile of sludge is the one primarily to blame. Once it was accumulated, it was basically an 'accident' waiting to happen.

I see a white knight has come to rescue the EPA from their incompetent handling of a Superfund site and causing a disaster. Government can never make a mistake, eh dohboi?

[PrestonSturges]

That's the thing about mines and fracking - all those minerals were doing no harm until they were disturbed and exposed to flowing water and oxygen. All that acidic material was harmless until someone opened the bottle.

[Plantagenet]

T All that acidic material was harmless until someone opened the bottle.

"Someone" opened the bottle?

Gosh....some mysterious someone opened a bottle.

Who exactly was it who was stupid enough to cause the leak?

Who was it who was so stupid as to not tell anyone for 24 hours in hopes no one would notice that a thousand miles of river was turning orange?

Who was so stupid as to grossly underestimate the amount of waste released, in a dumb attempt to minimize what they had done?

Who, even now, is saying there is no risk to people or hazard to wildlife because the poisonous sludge is moving down the river "so fast."

Who did all these incredibly dumb things?

Why... it was the EPA, of course.

Lets give credit where credit is due!

[dohboi]

"Government can never make a mistake, eh dohboi?"

Everybody makes mistakes. The difference is that the gov folks man up an admit to it and accept responsibility. Corporate wusses rarely do unless dragged through the court system for years to decades.

Thanks for the history, ROCK. Things are indeed always more complex than the headlines indicate. Nice to hear that Hennis, at least, is vowing full cooperation.

Basically, though, if somebody dumped a bunch of toxic sh!t in my yard, and in trying to deal with it I at some point slipped and some of it went into someone else's yard, yes, I was responsible for the immediate event, but it was the a$$hole who dumped the crap in my yard in the first place who holds primary responsibility.

(Unless you're Cog, of course, in which case corporations can do no harm ever and are always angelically blameless!! )

[PrestonSturges]

Oh Plant please stop with the groveling self humiliation. My psych books have lots of other stuff about people who play the "aggressive misinterpretation" game.

[Newfie]

The governmental "mistake" was to allow the mines to operate without forcing them to set aside sufficient funds to properly close the mines.

The "public" mistake is that we are essentially greedy and short sighted and want the miners there so we can make a buck also.

If there were any justice, but there is not, never mind.

Cog, I vote we put you in charge of mine clean up. I am assured by your self onion you would accomplish the task very efficiently and with the public's best interest at heart.

[Cog]

Its obvious if we would have had MORE government employees this would have never happened.

LOL

[Newfie]

Its obvious if we would have had MORE government employees this would have never happened.

LOL

So offer your solution.