Feds Say River They Polluted Is Safe, But Won’t Test Drinking Water

Drinking water and the “human food chain” affecting thousands of people are seriously threatened, because the Environmental Protection Agency polluted a Colorado river with toxic metals waste, a government document shows.

But that’s not what EPA has been telling the public since the agency’s August 2015 accident that turned the Animas River yellow for nearly two weeks, threatening the main source of drinking and working water for residents in three states and the Navajo Nation.

The EPA polluted the Animas River with 880,000 pounds of dangerous metals like lead and arsenic after it intentionally breached the Gold King Mine in August. EPA released a statement shortly thereafter telling residents not to worry because toxic materials had been in the river for decades.

“So those using the river for recreation, agriculture or drinking water should use the same precautions they always have,” an agency spokeswoman said in the statement.

But if the river is as safe as it has always been, why is EPA now moving to designate the Gold King Mine and 47 other nearby mines a Superfund site and placed on the fund’s National Priority List? That designation is reserved for the nation’s most polluted areas and would give the EPA additional funding and increased control over economic and other human activities throughout the area.

The agency claims the superfund proposal stems from fish populations decimated by decades of leaking mine waste. A document EPA recently posted on its web site, the Hazardous Ranking System Documentation Record, however, shows that drinking water for humans could also be endangered.

“This contamination threatens not only human food chain fisheries, wetlands and wildlife habitat, including endangered species habitat, but also has the potential to impact downstream drinking water supplies serving thousands of people,” the document said.

Yet, the EPA says it didn’t measure the threat to drinking water after the accident because “there are no municipal wells located within the four mile radius that serve as potable supplies and a low population density in the mining area, so therefore, the pathway is unlikely to greatly impact the site score.”

An EPA spokesman who requested anonymity told The Daily Caller News Foundation late Thursday that “the Hazard Ranking System is not a risk assessment. It is a numerical screening model, prescribed by regulation, used to determine eligibility for the NPL.”

In fact, water supplies downstream from the EPA-caused Gold King Mine spill were heavily affected.

Navajo Nation agriculture, for example, was seriously harmed, and outside water had to be brought in for residents and farmers. Farmington, N.M. — about 100 miles downstream from the spill — still closes its water intakes during storms that stir up poisonous contaminates lingering in the water.

Meanwhile, the EPA is using a lower water quality standard that allows significantly more lead in the river, and the agency doesn’t have a plan to protect humans or wildlife if officials measure spikes in contaminate levels during storms.

When asked how the human food chain can be seriously threatened without endangering humans, especially considering the popularity of fishing in nearby Silverton, Colorado, the EPA spokesman told TheDCNF that “our data has shown no impacts to private drinking water wells. In addition, municipal drinking water is treated to ensure it meets drinking water quality criteria prior to delivery to homes.”

The EPA also recognized that “waste piles do pose a threat to sensitive terrestrial environments, including the habitat of the Canada Lynx,” but said other hazards were “sufficient alone to qualify the site for” superfund designation.

The most important question that was ever proposed to your decision, or to the decision of any people under heaven, is before you, and you are to decide upon it by men of your own election, chosen specially for this purpose. If the constitution, offered to your acceptance, be a wise one, calculated to preserve the invaluable blessings of liberty, to secure the inestimable rights of mankind, and promote human happiness, then, if you accept it, you will lay a lasting foundation of happiness for millions yet unborn; generations to come will rise up and call you blessed. You may rejoice in the prospects of this vast extended continent becoming filled with freemen, who will assert the dignity of human nature. You may solace yourselves with the idea, that society, in this favoured land, will fast advance to the highest point of perfection; the human mind will expand in knowledge and virtue, and the golden age be, in some measure, realised. But if, on the other hand, this form of government contains principles that will lead to the subversion of liberty — if it tends to establish a despotism, or, what is worse, a tyrannic aristocracy; then, if you adopt it, this only remaining assylum for liberty will be shut up, and posterity will execrate your memory.

Momentous then is the question you have to determine, and you are called upon by every motive which should influence a noble and virtuous mind, to examine it well, and to make up a wise judgment. It is insisted, indeed, that this constitution must be received, be it ever so imperfect. If it has its defects, it is said, they can be best amended when they are experienced. But remember, when the people once part with power, they can seldom or never resume it again but by force. Many instances can be produced in which the people have voluntarily increased the powers of their rulers; but few, if any, in which rulers have willingly abridged their authority. This is a sufficient reason to induce you to be careful, in the first instance, how you deposit the powers of government.

So far therefore as its powers reach, all ideas of confederation are given up and lost. It is true this government is limited to certain objects, or to speak more properly, some small degree of power is still left to the states, but a little attention to the powers vested in the general government, will convince every candid man, that if it is capable of being executed, all that is reserved for the individual states must very soon be annihilated, except so far as they are barely necessary to the organization of the general government. The powers of the general legislature extend to every case that is of the least importance — there is nothing valuable to human nature, nothing dear to freemen, but what is within its power. It has authority to make laws which will affect the lives, the liberty, and property of every man in the United States; nor can the constitution or laws of any state, in any way prevent or impede the full and complete execution of every power given. The legislative power is competent to lay taxes, duties, imposts, and excises; — there is no limitation to this power…

And are by this clause invested with the power of making all laws, proper and necessary, for carrying all these into execution; and they may so exercise this power as entirely to annihilate all the state governments, and reduce this country to one single government. And if they may do it, it is pretty certain they will; for it will be found that the power retained by individual states, small as it is, will be a clog upon the wheels of the government of the United States; the latter therefore will be naturally inclined to remove it out of the way. Besides, it is a truth confirmed by the unerring experience of ages, that every man, and every body of men, invested with power, are ever disposed to increase it, and to acquire a superiority over every thing that stands in their way. This disposition, which is implanted in human nature, will operate in the federal legislature to lessen and ultimately to subvert the state authority, and having such advantages, will most certainly succeed, if the federal government succeeds at all.

In a free republic…

Brutus #1 - Anti-federalist

DISMANTLE unaccountable domestic agencies.

https://www.usa.gov/federal-agencies/a

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

/list of grievances - Declaration of Independence

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"Death to America!"