EPA DUMPS HEAVY METALS INTO A COLORADO RIVER

The Environmental Protection Agency "accidentally" released about 3 million gallons of pollutants into the Animas River near Durango, Colorado last week, turning the typically blue water to the color of mustard.
They accidentally breached a debris dam that had formed inside the mine and this triggered the release of the waste. 

Before spill on left, after spill on right.  

Officials said they believe the spill carried metals, mainly iron, zinc and copper, into a creek that feeds into the Animas.

Wednesday's spill caused a spike in concentrations of total and dissolved metals in the water, the EPA said. It's unclear exactly what effect that will have.  

Toxic waste, including arsenic and lead, which seeped into a river in southwest Colorado, has now crossed the state border into New Mexico. More than 550 gallons per minute are entering the water flow system according to the Environmental Protection Agency, which caused the spill.

The agency says it should have the results of samples undergoing lab testing soon, so they can find out just how contaminated the river has become. Aside from lead and arsenic, federal officials say the spill also contains, cadmium, aluminum, copper and calcium.  

“The sediment, the metals that are in that sediment are going to settle out to the stream bottom,"  Environmental Protection Agency Regional Director Shaun McGrath said, as cited by AP. "As we have storm surges, as we have flooding events, that sediment can and likely will get kicked back up into the water. We're going to have to do ongoing monitoring," McGrath added.

High levels of arsenic can cause blindness, paralysis and cancer, while lead poisoning can create muscle and vision problems in adults and can be fatal for children.  
Local communities in both states are not happy and have blasted the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for being slow in warning residents after the spill took place.

Officials in the cities of Aztec and Farmington say they have shut down the river’s access to water treatment plants, adding that the communities had a 90-day supply of water.

The Animas flows into the San Juan River in New Mexico, and the San Juan flows into Utah, where it joins the Colorado River in Lake Powell. 

THIS IS JUST ONE OF THOUSANDS OF SIMILAR INCIDENTS WE'VE ALL READ ABOUT OVER THE PAST SEVERAL DECADES, BUT IT IS A PRIME EXAMPLE OF HOW INDUSTRY CAN GET AWAY WITH MURDER WHILE AVERAGE CITIZEN IS OFTEN FINED AND/OR IMPRISONED FOR DOING THE EXACT SAME THING.
WHAT APPLIES TO AVERAGE CITIZEN MUST BE MADE TO APPLY TO INDUSTRY!

IT SHOWS US THAT THE EPA IS NOT REALLY A "PROTECTION AGENCY", UNLESS WE COUNT HOW IT "PROTECTS" CORPORATIONS THAT CONTAMINATE OUR ENVIRONMENT EVERY SINGLE DAY AND ENDANGER HUMAN LIVES.AND THEN WE FIND IT DOESN'T EVEN PROTECT US FROM ITSELF!

"According to the EPA, the spill occurred when one of its teams was using heavy equipment to enter the Gold King Mine, a suspended mine north of Durango.
Instead of entering the mine and beginning the process of pumping and treating the contaminated water inside as planned, the team accidentally caused it to flow into the nearby Animas.

Getting answers from the EPA is critical, according to Doris Stock, who lives along the river.

"We could lose our animals. It could damage our crops. It'll destroy the soil," she told KRQE.

Residents are looking for answers, but the EPA has few to offer at this point.

More than 300 people attended an informational meeting at the Farmington Civic Center Monday night.

"Over the next few days, the waters in the river are going to clear up," said Jeff Witte, New Mexico's agriculture secretary. "That's doesn't mean they're safe folks."

Mark Hayes of the EPA reminded residents not to use the water until they get an all clear. When that will be, they don't know.

The U.S. Geological Survey reported the size of the spill to be more than 3 million gallons, compared with the initial EPA estimate of 1 million gallons.

Gov. Susana Martinez has declared a state of emergency."

SEVERAL INCREDIBLE THINGS ABOUT THIS LATEST STORY OUT OF THAT POLLUTED REGION.

~ IT'S NOT THE FIRST TIME.
PRIOR TO LAST WEEK'S BLUNDER, 15 YEARS AGO, OWNERS OF THE RED AND BONITA MINE WERE FOLLOWING, SORT OF, THE EPA'S RECOMMENDATION TO PLUG ENTRANCE TO THAT ABANDONED MINE, THE PLUG BROKE AND 500 MILLION GALLONS OF THE SAME KIND OF CONTAMINANT REACHED THE CEMENT CREEK BELOW THE BREAK.

~ LOCALS HAVE LONG FOUGHT AGAINST THE ANIMAS RIVER AND TRIBUTARIES BEING DECLARED A "SUPERFUND" SITE BY THE EPA.
IT SEEMS THEY DON'T WANT THE EPA LEVYING FINES AGAINST ANYONE AND FORCING PAYMENT FOR THE CLEANUP.

RESIDENTS WHO HAVE OPPOSED THE EPA CLEANUP SEEM TO HOLD OUT HOPE THAT THE OLD GOLD MINES WILL REOPEN AND BRING BACK A BOOMING ECONOMY TO THE REGION.
THE MINING CONGLOMERATE WHICH APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN THE CAUSE OF SUCH AN ENVIRONMENTAL MESS INITIALLY KEEPS DANGLING THE PROVERBIAL CARROT BEFORE LOCALS' NOSES. 

IF THE MINE OPERATORS HAVE TO PAY FOR CLEANUP, MINES MIGHT NEVER REOPEN THERE SEEMS TO BE THE TRICK THEY'RE USING TO NOT HAVE TO CLEAN UP AFTER THEMSELVES.

WHAT IS UNBELIEVABLE IS THAT THE EPA HAS ALLOWED THE POLLUTION TO CONTINUE FOR DECADES!

AND RESIDENTS WANT 'MORE POLLUTION, YES, PLEASE'?

AS WE SAW EARLIER, CEMENT CREEK, A TRIBUTARY TO THE ANIMAS RIVER, EXPERIENCED THIS EXACT SCENARIO YEARS AGO.

"The stream of heavy-metal pollutants gushing out of Silverton’s mines and into its waterways has grown so toxic that between 2005 and 2010, three out of the four trout species living in the Upper Animas River south of Silverton have disappeared.

Other Silvertonians attribute their increasing openness to the Superfund route to their growing disillusionment with the ARSG, a volunteer group that has tried to find solutions to water pollution caused by mine drainages since the 1990s through a “collaborative process” that includes the EPA and Sunnyside Gold Corp., the last mining company to operate in Silverton.

The Animas River Stakeholders Group has been researching treatment plant options, but it could be very expensive to maintain.

Sunnyside adamantly opposes a Superfund listing. The designation would give the EPA broad powers to force any parties it deems responsible for damage to pay for a cleanup.

“Now, they’re [SUNNYSIDE] just making public-relations offers because as a deep-pocketed party, they’re trying to avoid liability.”
“We all agree that it’s terribly important to protect the water and the environment,” Silverton resident William Dodge said. “But this isn’t just a Silverton issue. Silverton has clean water to drink – it’s the folks downstream, in Durango and in the Southern Ute Tribe – who are most outrightly affected by the mine drainage into the water.”

Sunnyside Gold Corp. is owned by Kinross Gold Corp., an international mining conglomerate with a market capitalization of $3.7 billion, according to its stock evaluation.

GOLD KING STOPPED TREATING THE RIVER AND CREEKS BACK IN 2003!
THEY'VE DONE NOTHING TO HELP THE RIVER RECOVER OR TO HELP ANY LIFE, HUMAN OR OTHERWISE, AFFECTED BY THE TOXINS. 

"The Red and Bonita mine and three other nearby mines are responsible for about 800 gallons of toxic waste EVERY MINUTE flowing into the Animas River watershed, said Peter Butler of the Animas River Stakeholders Group. 

[It was] in 2006 [that] the Red and Bonita mine started leaking high levels of metals after the American Tunnel was plugged in several places, which raised the water table, said Peter Butler, co-coordinator of the Animas River Stakeholders Group.

In recent years, the EPA and other agencies have come together to assess if plugging the mine would significantly reduce pollution. They found it contributes some of the highest levels of heavy metals year-round to Cement Creek and leaks about 300 gallons of polluted water per minute, Way said. A plug would help, but it would not eliminate all the seeping metals.

A majority of the San Juan County commissioners say they still support the ARSG and object to Superfund.

Commissioner Scott Fetchenhier said, “Right now, our stance is that we don’t want Superfund to come in. We want the stakeholders’ approach. They’ve spent 20 years on it, and we want to give them one more chance. Let’s see how plugging the Red and Bonita works.”

Commissioner Ernest Kuhlman said, “Superfund designation could have irreversible affects for any community, especially a mining community. We’re not going to get any companies to invest or pursue mining in our area with a Superfund designation hanging over our heads.”

HIGH COUNTRY NEWS ELABORATED ON THE SITUATION AND EXPLAINED MUCH.

"Miners started going after the minerals in the 1870s, and the river's been the victim of their pollution ever since. Mines simply poured their tailings directly into the creeks and rivers until, in the 1930s, downstream farmers got them to stop; the remnants of those releases can still be found under the river bed in Durango and beyond. 

Then there's acid mine drainage. The portals and shafts blasted into the mountainsides hijack the natural hydrology, pulling water flowing through fractures toward natural springs into the mine tunnels. There, the water reacts with iron disulfide (pyrite) and oxygen to form sulfuric acid. The acidic water dissolves naturally occurring heavy metals such as zinc, lead, cadmium, copper and aluminum. The resulting contaminated water flows out of the mine adit as if from a spring. By 1991, when the last major mine in the watershed shut down, there were some 400 mines in the watershed, many discharging unmitigated discharges into streams. 

Not a fish could be found for miles downstream from Silverton, and the impacts to aquatic life were felt in Durango, where, when the mines were still running, sensitive fish were unable to reproduce.

Superfund has long been on the table, and long been swept off: As mining waned in the late 1980s, federal and state regulatory agencies started looking at how to clean up the mess. Superfund, which comes with a big pile of cash, seemed like the obvious approach. But locals feared that the stigma would destroy tourism along with any possibility of mining’s return. 

The problem is massive and complex, but not hopeless: In 1991, the last big mine in the region, the Sunnyside, shut down. Its owner, Sunnyside Gold Corp., planned to plug the American Tunnel, thus stanching the flow of acid mine drainage (which it ran through a water treatment plant), and then walk away. The state wouldn’t allow it: While a plug, or bulkhead, would be a short-term fix, in the long-term the water, and its contaminants, might back up in the mine and find another way to the surface. 

 Then it got even more complex: Sunnyside cut a deal with the state and Gold King mining, a small operation owned by a Silvertonian. Sunnyside would leave, and turn over its water treatment operations to Gold King, along with enough cash to keep it running for a while. Gold King hoped to eventually resume mining the Gold King (not far from the American Tunnel). For decades, the Gold King, like the nearby Red and Bonita mine, had not discharged any water. But not long after Sunnyside sealed its bulkheads, water started pouring out of all of them. "It was not a coincidence," says Peter Butler, ARSG co-coordinator. The backed up water had found natural fractures to follow into the other mines. Together, the Gold King and Red and Bonita would become some of the biggest polluters in the basin. Initially, their waters were run through the treatment plant that Sunnyside had left behind. 
But before long, Gold King ran into technical, financial and legal troubles and the treatment plant stopped operating. Water quality for miles downstream once again deteriorated. The fish that had returned to the Animas below Silverton were wiped out.

In the meantime, a piecemeal approach continues: The ARSG, along with federal and state agencies, continue to do what they can to clean up mines. In some cases, this means plugging them, which is what the EPA is working on at the Red and Bonita, and planned to do at the Gold King, when the dam broke. Other methods include diverting water before it gets into the mine in the first place, and removing waste piles at the entrances to mines so that acidic discharge from the mine can’t leech minerals out of the rock. Until the Gold King is plugged, it will continue to discharge acid mine drainage, just as it had before the spill.

• This isn’t the first time that something like this has happened, nor is it the worst: In June of 1975, a huge tailings pile on the banks of the Animas River northeast of Silverton was breached, dumping tens of thousands of gallons of water, along with 50,000 tons of heavy-metal-loaded tailings into the Animas. 

For 100 miles downstream, the river "looked like aluminum paint," according to a Durango Herald reporter at the time; fish placed in a cage in the water in Durango all died within 24 hours. It was just one of many breaches of various magnitude. 

Just a decade before, the same tailings pile was found to be spilling cyanide-laced water into the river. In 1978, after the American Tunnel was bored Sunnyside Mine workings got too close to the floor of Lake Emma, the lake burst through, sending an estimated 500 million gallons of water tearing through the mines, sweeping up huge machinery, tailings and sludge, and blasting it out the American Tunnel and sending it downstream. No one was working in the mine at the time, which is either miraculous, or suspicious, depending on who you ask.
The plume moved through critical habitat for razorback suckers and pike minnows further downstream; they may prove more sensitive than the trout. But then, the Animas and San Juan rivers in New Mexico had their own water quality issues before the spill: alarmingly high levels of human fecal bacteria.

• The EPA messed up, but they’re not the root cause: It’s true that EPA officials took a “cavalier attitude” (EPA Region 8 administrator Shaun McGrath’s word) in the first hours after the spill, downplaying the impacts and failing to notify those downstream. 

And they admit that before tinkering with the mine, they should have taken better steps to mitigate a possible disaster, such as drilling into the mine from the top to assess the situation without the danger of busting the dam. Had they not messed with it at all, though, the gathering water and sludge might have busted through the de facto dam sometime anyway. Clearly, the water quality issue goes far deeper than this one unfortunate event."

THE LESSON HERE IS THAT WE MIGHT SAY MONEY ONCE AGAIN TRUMPS HUMAN HEALTH AND THE LAND ON WHICH HUMANS LIVE, THE CREEKS, RIVERS, OCEANS, MOUNTAINS, FORESTS AND ALL THAT DEPEND ON THEM FOR LIFE ARE PLACED A RUNG OR TWO BELOW PROFITS, A FEW JOBS, THE VALUE OF PROPERTY, AND KEEPING INDUSTRY HAPPY.

MAYBE SOMEDAY THAT WILL CHANGE, BUT MY GUESS IS THAT, NOT EVEN WITH THAT LAST DYING BREATH, WILL MOST PEOPLE EVER VALUE LIFE ABOVE MONEY.
WE'LL ALLOW AND EXCUSE AND TOLERATE ANY AND ALL SUCH INCIDENTS IN THE NAME OF A "HEALTHY ECONOMY", NOT ONCE IMAGINING THAT WE TRULY NEED MUCH LESS THAN WE WANT, NOR FINDING ALTERNATIVES TO ALL THAT CURRENTLY POISONS OUR WORLD.

THE TEA ROOM MAKES NO APOLOGIES FOR LOOKING BACK 500 YEARS OR SO AND SEEING A MUCH BETTER WORLD.