Nice job EPA! (1 Viewer)

[jonessed]

I predict we will discover in time that a big part of the problem is not enough monies to properly shore up these sites, and that the EPA complained about this in the past, and that conservative lawmakers actually reduced funds.

Just a hunch...

You mean like how the EPA has been trying to get the site designated a Super Fund site so they could get money to clean it up and locals have been fighting to stop that? Yeah all EPAs fault.

Keeping the EPA out was clearly the right move. Unfortunately, it looks like they got in somehow anyway.

Yea clearly the right move to keep them out then blame them for what happened.

Since the EPA was in there with heavy machinery it's pretty clear the locals were unsuccessful at keeping them out.

This isn't the fault of long dead gold miners, Republicans, the Tea Party, locals, or Santa Claus. The EPA accepted responsibility. You don't have to go grovelling around making dumb-### excuses for them.

Hopefully they pull their #### together quickly, begin cleaning up their mess, and start distributing funds to the local economy they just thrashed.

 

[Bonfire]

Probably a scapegoat firing of some sort to try and ease current anger, then any class action suit is drug slowly through the process until the DOJ hands down a slap on the wrist some time later after people's memory has faded. Would be a different thing had this been a business or individual which is 'one of you' vs a government agency which is 'one of us' to the people handing down fines and punishments.

 

[timschochet]

I predict we will discover in time that a big part of the problem is not enough monies to properly shore up these sites, and that the EPA complained about this in the past, and that conservative lawmakers actually reduced funds.

Just a hunch...

You mean like how the EPA has been trying to get the site designated a Super Fund site so they could get money to clean it up and locals have been fighting to stop that? Yeah all EPAs fault.

Keeping the EPA out was clearly the right move. Unfortunately, it looks like they got in somehow anyway.

Yea clearly the right move to keep them out then blame them for what happened.

Since the EPA was in there with heavy machinery it's pretty clear the locals were unsuccessful at keeping them out.

This isn't the fault of long dead gold miners, Republicans, the Tea Party, locals, or Santa Claus. The EPA accepted responsibility. You don't have to go grovelling around making dumb-### excuses for them.

Hopefully they pull their #### together quickly, begin cleaning up their mess, and start distributing funds to the local economy they just thrashed.

That's not the point. In my original post, I was just speculating, but the speculation was based on past conservative efforts to weaken or defund the EPA. But if what NC Commish wrote is true, it may be that the EPA attempted to solve this issue BEFORE it could become a problem, knowing full well that if that the heavy machinery it was using could easily fail. And that attempt was prevented.

 

[beer 30]

Dilution is the solution folks

This will all be a blip on the radar in another 4 weeks, Mother Nature will take care of it.

 

[jonessed]

So if you had a house on the river near where this occurred, what now? Do you sue the EPA?

Sue the people who created the pollution and abandoned the mine?

The mine had been closed for almost 100 years. This is on the EPA. No reason to make excuses for them. They royally ####ed up.

Didn't realize it had been closed that long, and not making excuses. My point was that we should be careful in allowing businesses to make messes they can't clean up on their own dime.

The point is you are making a ridiculous attempt at deflecting and trying to make this about business, instead of about the government agency which is funded billions of dollars to take care of these things.

You are ridiculous. We taxpayers are paying to clean up some company's mess. That sucks. I don't like it. What's done is done but, going forward, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I'd much rather us spend a few billion dollars now enforcing tighter regulations and corporate accountability than spending the bigger money cleaning up after they take the money and run.

FWIW I agree the EPA botched this cleanup, and heads should roll. Unacceptable.

What are you going to do? Disinter a bunch of gold and silver miners and exact revenge on their bodies? The tighter regulations to prevent this already exist. The mine has been closed since the Coolidge administration. There is no corporate boogeyman to blame.

 

[Hooper31]

Dilution is the solution folks

This will all be a blip on the radar in another 4 weeks, Mother Nature will take care of it.

As is generally the case, beer5 is the voice of reason.

 

[NCCommish]

I predict we will discover in time that a big part of the problem is not enough monies to properly shore up these sites, and that the EPA complained about this in the past, and that conservative lawmakers actually reduced funds.

Just a hunch...

You mean like how the EPA has been trying to get the site designated a Super Fund site so they could get money to clean it up and locals have been fighting to stop that? Yeah all EPAs fault.

Keeping the EPA out was clearly the right move. Unfortunately, it looks like they got in somehow anyway.

Yea clearly the right move to keep them out then blame them for what happened.

Since the EPA was in there with heavy machinery it's pretty clear the locals were unsuccessful at keeping them out.

This isn't the fault of long dead gold miners, Republicans, the Tea Party, locals, or Santa Claus. The EPA accepted responsibility. You don't have to go grovelling around making dumb-### excuses for them.

Hopefully they pull their #### together quickly, begin cleaning up their mess, and start distributing funds to the local economy they just thrashed.

Hopefully you pull yours out. The locals fought the EPA to prevent designating the site a Super Fund site. This means the EPA couldn't get funding to clean it up before this happened. Sorry that such a simple concept escapes your kneejerk government sucks bull####.

 

[Rayderr]

I predict we will discover in time that a big part of the problem is not enough monies to properly shore up these sites, and that the EPA complained about this in the past, and that conservative lawmakers actually reduced funds.

Just a hunch...

You mean like how the EPA has been trying to get the site designated a Super Fund site so they could get money to clean it up and locals have been fighting to stop that? Yeah all EPAs fault.

Keeping the EPA out was clearly the right move. Unfortunately, it looks like they got in somehow anyway.

Yea clearly the right move to keep them out then blame them for what happened.

Since the EPA was in there with heavy machinery it's pretty clear the locals were unsuccessful at keeping them out.

This isn't the fault of long dead gold miners, Republicans, the Tea Party, locals, or Santa Claus. The EPA accepted responsibility. You don't have to go grovelling around making dumb-### excuses for them.

Hopefully they pull their #### together quickly, begin cleaning up their mess, and start distributing funds to the local economy they just thrashed.

Hopefully you pull yours out. The locals fought the EPA to prevent designating the site a Super Fund site. This means the EPA couldn't get funding to clean it up before this happened. Sorry that such a simple concept escapes your kneejerk government sucks bull####.

They were in the process of cleaning it up when this occurred.

 

[Ditkaless Wonders]

Dilution is the solution folks

This will all be a blip on the radar in another 4 weeks, Mother Nature will take care of it.

Monsoon season approaches.

 

[NCCommish]

I predict we will discover in time that a big part of the problem is not enough monies to properly shore up these sites, and that the EPA complained about this in the past, and that conservative lawmakers actually reduced funds.

Just a hunch...

You mean like how the EPA has been trying to get the site designated a Super Fund site so they could get money to clean it up and locals have been fighting to stop that? Yeah all EPAs fault.

Keeping the EPA out was clearly the right move. Unfortunately, it looks like they got in somehow anyway.

Yea clearly the right move to keep them out then blame them for what happened.

Since the EPA was in there with heavy machinery it's pretty clear the locals were unsuccessful at keeping them out.

This isn't the fault of long dead gold miners, Republicans, the Tea Party, locals, or Santa Claus. The EPA accepted responsibility. You don't have to go grovelling around making dumb-### excuses for them.

Hopefully they pull their #### together quickly, begin cleaning up their mess, and start distributing funds to the local economy they just thrashed.

Hopefully you pull yours out. The locals fought the EPA to prevent designating the site a Super Fund site. This means the EPA couldn't get funding to clean it up before this happened. Sorry that such a simple concept escapes your kneejerk government sucks bull####.

They were in the process of cleaning it up when this occurred.

According to what i read the were in the process of checking another one when they knocked down the dam/plug in this one.

 

[jamny]

link

Major mining operations ended in 1991.

U.S. EPA was contemplating a Superfund designation of whole Upper Basin. Most of the Stakeholders thought that such a designation would lead to lots of litigation, reduced property values, distrust, and resources going to attorneys and consultants as opposed to on the ground projects that might improve water quality.

 

[Rayderr]

from NBC News:

Fluid from inside the Gold King Mine, shuttered since 1923, has been leaching into the surrounding area. That mine alone was a slow motion disaster, in the EPA's opinion, and the area is shot through with dozens of similarly toxic wells. It's so bad that the EPA has tried to declare the area a Superfund site — clearing the way for an ambitious cleanup.

But after local opposition, the agency opted for a more modest, incremental plan. A crew would slurp out the worst pools of sludge and dispose of them properly. That was the goal near Silverton when heavy equipment somehow disturbed an earthen wall that secured the liquid, releasing an up to 80-mile ribbon of pollution downstream.

 

[jamny]

An article before it happened.

SILVERTON – Mine remediation and greater monitoring above Silverton this summer will help ease the level of poisonous metals in the Animas River, at least at first.

At the Red and Bonita Mine, where polluted water is pouring out at 500 gallons per minute, Environmental Protection Agency workers would like to put a stop to the flow by September, said Steven Way, on-scene coordinator for the agency.
About 18 percent of the heavy metals in the Animas River come from the mine, said Peter Butler, co-coordinator of the Animas River Stakeholder Group.
It is contributing cadmium, zinc, iron and aluminum to the river, which are responsible for killing off native fish and other species.
The $1.5 million construction project is set to start in mid-July, and it will require workers to muck out nontoxic mineral deposits from the floor of the mine before installing a concrete bulkhead. It is not a Superfund project, but the EPA plans to pay for it, Way said.
Red and Bonita began draining in 2006 after the Sunnyside Gold Corp., the last major mining operation in Silverton, plugged the American Tunnel in three places. The small Red and Bonita Mine, founded in the 1800s, was never productive.
The EPA understands that this new bulkhead could have the same effect as the American Tunnel bulkheads and cause water to drain from other mines. As a result, the agency plans to monitor the Gold King number 7 level and the Mogul because they are both nearby, Way said.
Gold King Number 7, which is partially collapsed, will be stabilized this summer to allow for better monitoring of flows, he said.
Right after the Red and Bonita is plugged, there will be an improvement in water quality, but it doesn’t last or water quality worsens, the bulkhead will have a valve so the EPA can open it up again, Way said.
“This, in a way, is as much as experiment as the American Tunnel,” said Steve Fearn, co-coordinator of the Animas River Stakeholders Group.
The idea behind a bulkhead is to return water to its natural path. When water can percolate through the soil and rock slowly, it carries much less metal down to the Animas River, Way said.
The region around Silverton is naturally rich in metals. So it is difficult to determine how much dissolved metal was in the creeks and rivers before it was disturbed by mining.
“It’s been bleeding out of the mountains for a long time,” Way said.
The idea is to improve water quality, but it is likely impossible to eliminate the metal in the water.
“There’s no expectation we’re going to see a bunch of fish swimming up Cement Creek,” he said.
If the Red and Bonita bulkhead doesn’t work, it may be cause to look more seriously at water treatment, Butler said.
Sunnyside Gold Corp. was treating about 1,600 gallons of water per minute up until the early 2000s, and it had a positive impact.
Permanent water treatment is expensive, and the Animas River Stakeholders Group, which includes the EPA, has been focused on more short-term projects. For example, this summer the group plans to move and cover a tailings pile near the Bullion King Mine. The waste will be covered with plastic to keep it out of the watershed, said Kirstin Brown, with the Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety.
In another area, Sunnyside Gold Corp. is looking into how groundwater might be contributing to the problem. The company is voluntarily doing the study at the request of EPA and other agencies, said Larry Perino, reclamation manager for the company.
This year, the company plans to try to find the underground paths water is taking to join the Animas River between Howardsville and Cement Creek, Perino said.
This stretch of river runs along Sunnyside’s dry settling ponds, and the river picks up more metals along this stretch in March and April during runoff, Butler said.
But it is unknown where those metals are coming from, and Perino couldn’t say what might be done if groundwater was found running through the ponds full of tailings.
Regardless of the outcomes of the groundwater study and the Red and Bonita monitoring results, the efforts will add to a greater understanding of complex water drainages.
“A year from now, we might know a lot more than we do now,” Butler said.

 

[Ditkaless Wonders]

The geneses of this problem is from another time. That alone carries a lesson about the consequences of our actions on this planet. I have long felt that this lesson has been ubiquitous enough that we, meaning in this case the government, ought to prepare for the inevitable repeating of this ongoing pattern. When we lease or sell public lands for extractive processes we often do so at what I would consider to be less than market rates. Yes, extractive industries take some risks, risks they pretend are blind, though near-sighted may be more apt, but that is no justification, in my mind, for deviation from market rates.

What we should do when leasing these lands is not only do so at currently prevailing rates, but we should extract a premium, a surcharge if you will. That surcharge should go into escrow for an emergencies and contingencies clean up fund. The extractive industries should prefund clean up. If, after a sufficient time after ceasing operations the land is deemed safe some portion of that fund can revert, on a yearly payout schedule, to the leasee. The remainder of the escrow account can be devoted to cleanup of sites from antiquity, before this method was put in place. These lands and the mineral wealth they contain are our heritage. They are being sold far too cheaply.

I have heard it said that my solution would deter extraction. So be it. Market forces forcing conservation appeals to me. Also, it is not like opportunity deferred is opportunity denied. At some point of scarcity as resources around the world decline this will make market sense. Husbanding resources for the future may actually make us stronger.

 

[Rayderr]

EPA knew of ‘blowout’ risk for tainted water at gold mineMICHAEL BIESECKER, The Associated Press Published: August 22, 2015, 12:44 amUpdated: August 22, 2015, 2:24 am
WASHINGTON (AP) — Internal documents released late Friday show managers at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency were aware of the potential for a catastrophic “blowout” at an abandoned mine that could release “large volumes” of wastewater laced with toxic heavy metals.

EPA released the documents following weeks of prodding from The Associated Press and other media organizations. EPA and contract workers accidentally unleashed 3 million gallons of contaminated wastewater on Aug. 5 as they inspected the idled Gold King Mine near Silverton, Colorado.

Among the documents is a June 2014 work order for a planned cleanup that noted that the old mine had not been accessible since 1995, when the entrance partially collapsed. The plan appears to have been produced by Environmental Restoration, a private contractor working for EPA.

“This condition has likely caused impounding of water behind the collapse,” the report says. “ln addition, other collapses within the workings may have occurred creating additional water impounding conditions. Conditions may exist that could result in a blowout of the blockages and cause a release of large volumes of contaminated mine waters and sediment from inside the mine, which contain concentrated heavy metals.”

A subsequent May 2015 action plan for the mine also notes the potential for a blowout.

There are at least three ongoing investigations into exactly how EPA triggered the disaster, which tainted rivers in Colorado, New Mexico and Utah with lead, arsenic and other contaminates. EPA says its water testing has shown contamination levels have since fallen back to pre-spill levels, though experts warn the heavy metals have likely sunk and mixed with bottom sediments that could someday be stirred back up.

The documents, which the agency released about 10:30 p.m. eastern time, do not include any account of what happened immediately before or after the spill. The wastewater flowed into a tributary of the Animas and San Juan rivers, turning them a sickly yellow.

Elected officials in affected states and elsewhere have been highly critical of the EPA’s initial response. Among the unanswered questions is why it took the agency nearly a day to inform local officials in downstream communities that rely on the rivers for drinking water.

Much of the text in the documents released Friday was redacted by EPA officials. Among the items blacked out is the line in a 2013 safety plan for the Gold King job that specifies whether workers were required to have phones that could work at the remote site, which is more than 11,000 feet up a mountain.

EPA did not immediately respond Friday night to questions from the AP. In the wake of the spill, it has typically taken days to get any detailed response from the agency, if at all.

On its website, contractor Environmental Restoration posted a brief statement last week confirming its employees were present at the mine when the spill occurred. The company declined to provide more detail, saying that to do so would violate “contractual confidentiality obligations.”

The EPA has not yet provided a copy of its contact with the firm. On the March 2015 cost estimate for the work released Friday, the agency blacked out all the dollar figures.

Gotta love the EPA releasing the documents at 10:30pm on a Friday.

 

[Chadstroma]

Obviously we need a new regulatory body with regulatory powers to regulate the regulators.

 

[Rove!]

Lots of questions which I doubt will ever be answered

The handling of the aftermath has been horrendous. McCarthy needs to step down

 

[Ignoramus]

A cube that is 100 gallons wide, 100 gallons long, and 100 gallons high is exactly 1 million gallons. Multiple that image in your mind by 3 and you've got it.

That helps a lot. I think my driveway is something like 120 liters wide by 16 cups long so it really does offer some perspective!

 

[rascal]

A cube that is 100 gallons wide, 100 gallons long, and 100 gallons high is exactly 1 million gallons. Multiple that image in your mind by 3 and you've got it.

That helps a lot. I think my driveway is something like 120 liters wide by 16 cups long so it really does offer some perspective!

it takes 660K gallons to fill an olympic swimming pool...so basically 5 olympic pools.

 

[fantasycurse42]

A cube that is 100 gallons wide, 100 gallons long, and 100 gallons high is exactly 1 million gallons. Multiple that image in your mind by 3 and you've got it.

That helps a lot. I think my driveway is something like 120 liters wide by 16 cups long so it really does offer some perspective!

Really glad I stumbled upon this gem.

 

[jon_mx]

Unlike Hillary, the EPA (as every federal agency does) has actual traceabity and records of events and are not kept in Jimmy-Bobs basement on his personal server.

 

[Hooper31]

A cube that is 100 gallons wide, 100 gallons long, and 100 gallons high is exactly 1 million gallons. Multiple that image in your mind by 3 and you've got it.

That helps a lot. I think my driveway is something like 120 liters wide by 16 cups long so it really does offer some perspective!

Really glad I stumbled upon this gem.

Apologies to you both, but glad to entertain. I was attempting to visualize the amount using a gallon (of milk in my mind). Describing three million gallons of material as a cube that was about 74 feet on each side would have been better.

 

[beer 30]

3 million gallons of anything, toxic or not, is a #### ton but again, by the time they try to contain this, especially on a river, it's gone. Mom Nature knows how to fix it but I fear at some point we, as her most ardent protagonists, will take it one step too far and she will be done with us. You can only poke the bear so many times before he gets pissed off.

I worked for an environmental clean up company for 8 years doing this stuff. The EPA serves a very valuable service but like any government agency wastes a lot of money on frivolous stuff instead of actually, ya know, cleaning #### up.

Edit to add - Hooper Swing by now that skrewel has started and you got nothing to do

 

[Rove!]

Lots of questions which I doubt will ever be answered

The handling of the aftermath has been horrendous. McCarthy needs to step down

McCarthy needs to resign