Posted on 08/09/2015 7:00:02 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
Reuters) - Some 3 million gallons of toxic wastewater, triple previous estimates, have poured from a defunct Colorado gold mine into local streams since a team of Environmental Protection Agency workers accidentally triggered the spill last week, EPA officials said on Sunday.
The discharge, containing high concentrations of heavy metals such as arsenic, mercury and lead, was continuing to flow at the rate of 500 gallons per minute on Sunday, four days after the spill began at the Gold King Mine, the EPA said.
An unspecified number of residents living downstream of the spill who draw their drinking supplies from their private wells have reported water discoloration, but there has been no immediate evidence of harm to human health, livestock or wildlife, EPA officials told reporters in a telephone conference call.
Still, residents were advised to avoid drinking or bathing in water drawn from wells in the vicinity, and the government was arranging to supply water to homes and businesses in need.
The spill began on Wednesday after an EPA inspection team was called to the abandoned mine near the town of Silverton in southwestern Colorado to examine previously existing wastewater seepage.
As workers excavated loose debris at the site, they inadvertently breached the wall of a mine tunnel, unleashing a flow of the orange-tinged slurry that cascaded into Cement Creek and then into the Animas River downstream.
The town of Durango, Colorado, roughly 50 miles south of the spill site, shut off its intakes of river water as a precaution, according to the EPA.
By Friday, the main plume of the spill had traveled some 75 miles south to the New Mexico border, prompting utilities in the towns of Aztec and Farmington to shut off their intakes from the Animas as well, local authorities said.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
LOL, you forgot, revisit the IRS scandal. Government is never accountable to laws, fines, we the people. This EPA thing is yet another example of big government gone awry - doing worse things than inaginable.
It’s just a nasty color, no mention of the poisonous heavy metals. So they not only have no acountability, they are already covering it up and not telling us the whole truth.
Throw them in jail, close down the EPA.
Now, imagine if this was Exxon or Dupont (or whoever) that caused this. It would be 24/7 coverage.
This affects a lot of people now. Seeing as so many have had to leave the once populous northeast and midwest areas--many of them have come here to places like Colorado, Arizona and Nevada.
Does anyone remember how GW Bush was hammered for not wanting to continue Clinton's enviro regulations that would have required all municipal water to keep arsenic below 10 parts per million? A ridiculously expensive proposition for many towns and cities.
Albuquerque Battles to Leave Arsenic in the Water
And now the EPA has dumped arsenic, lead and mercury into the water by the ton.
Obama Administration vs. Tombstone(the short version of the story is that the 0bama Admin. attempts to wipe Tombstone off the map over arsenic in one of its two wells.)
NONE of them are in government.
The first rule of starting any project is to understand the current status of your site.
They obviously neglected to do a thorough exploration of mine and had no idea that the water level in mine was that far above grade. If they had they would have been more careful disturbing ground near an active seep.
The other thing that in retrospect should been done is making a study of the mine architecture relative to the ground surface to determine the likely source of the seeps.
Had they done that study they may have known that a shaft was close to the surface at that point and avoided disturbing the ground.
Of course depending on the age of the mine drawing may or may not be available.
Regardless of that the first thing that needed to be determined was the water level in the mine. The hydraulic pressure on the seep would be dependent on the height of the water in the mine.
Had they determined the height of water in the mine they might have had some idea of the problems they faced.
There are definitely more than that -- but NONE of them are employed by any government entity.
I am not familiar with those rivers. Which rivers will it take from there and where does it end up?
If it is California they are going to be p- ssed.
I wonder if they had any mining people or just environmental engineers. Most likely they wouldn’t tarnish their organization with people who once worked in a capitalist enterprise. One of the very few competent federal agencies I’ve dealt with was MSHA during the time period when they hired experienced miners.
How Old Are You?
Did you know Harry Truman personally?
LOL I do very much remember Harry. I was also a member of the Mine - Mill Union before the Steelworkers took them over. I also remember the Sunshine Mine Fire.
Well now that we have established that you are older than me (by the way even pre-Cambrian fossils aren’t that old) I have to say that only true believers are hired by the EPA and capitalist just don’t fit the mold.
If you don’t want to read the whole thing start at the paragraph that starts “In 1959, the Standard Metals Corporation”
“The Sampson Mine still holds the record for a single shipment of gold. The shipment showed an assay value of $180,000.00 per ton”
Talk about a glory hole.
http://nationalmap.gov/streamer/webApp/streamer.html
Enter “Animas River” in the search. Find “Silverton CO” on the map.
Click on “Trace map Downstream”
Click on the Animas River to see where it goes.
The mine owner.
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