Free Republic

Shortly after the EPA triggered the release, to obscure and limit its own liability, the EPA created the Bonita Peak Mining District—around the Gold King Mine—and made the Superfund designation. Past EPA studies found the area did not merit inclusion on the National Priorities List. ... EPA’s Attempt to Bury its Colorado Gold Mine Disaster is Illegal. ... Mountain States Legal Foundation for its clients ... advised the three-judge panel that the Obama administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), pursuant to the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA or Superfund statute), designated what it erroneously called the Bonita Peak...

DENVER (Reuters) - Federal investigators said on Monday they have opened a criminal probe into the 2015 spill of some 3 million gallons (11 million liters) of toxic wastewater from a defunct Colorado gold mine that was triggered by a contractor with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). At the urging of congressional leaders, the EPA's Office of Inspector General is investigating the rupture from the Gold King Mine above Silverton, Colorado, that fouled waterways in three states and Native American lands, the agency said in a statement. "Based on requests from several members of the House and Senate, the OIG...

New exhibition shows how tribe dealt with blowout last August. Navajo artist Venaya Yazzie wrote the Diné expression – Tó éí ííná – beside a photograph of a friend sullenly looking out on the tainted San Juan River in the days after the Gold King Mine spill. It means “Water is Life,” and for the indigenous tribes affected by the mine blowout in August, the words sum up months of confusion, fear and sadness surrounding the health of critical southwest waterways. On Aug. 5, the Environmental Protection Agency breached the portal of the mine north of Silverton, sending an estimated...

More than 30 individuals, businesses seek damages from EPA. Financial damage claims for those affected by the Aug. 5 Gold King Mine blowout eclipsed $1.3 million just two months after the Environmental Protection Agency triggered the release of 3 million gallons of mine wastewater down the Animas River. ... more than 30 individuals and business owners filed Form 95, the claim process for financial reimbursements from economic loss caused by wrongful U.S. government actions. The combined claims total about $1.3 million in damages ... the hardest hit are rafting companies and their employees, who were forced to shut down for...

Is this something which is fairly new in the history of our government or was there just nobody paying attention up until now? This past week there was another spill of potentially dangerous waste water from a mine in Colorado. And once again it wasn’t miners or anyone in the private sector messing up the landscape… it was the increasingly inappropriately named Environmental Protection Agency. (Denver Post) An EPA crew working at the Standard Mine above Crested Butte has triggered a spill of wastewater into a creek.Crested Butte Mayor Aaron Huckstep and staffers for U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton said...

The EPA is trying to cheat Navajo Indians by getting them to sign away their rights to future claims from the agency’s Gold King Mine disaster, tribal officials charged Wednesday, adding more to the administration’s public relations problems over the spill that threatens critical Southwest waterways. EPA officials were going door-to-door asking Navajo, some of whom don’t speak English as their primary language, to sign a form that offers to pay damages incurred so far from the spill, but waiving the right to come back and ask for more if their costs escalate or if they discover bigger problems, ......