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 ...
So who is paying the billions in fines and going to prison?
So who is paying the billions in fines and going to prison?
That only happens to conservatives.
I’m cheesing off people on Facebook with the statement of, “The EPA caused this spill with your tax dollars. If they issue themselves a fine (*chuckle*), they’ll PAY it with your tax dollars, too. Tired of Big Government yet?””
Yellow mine waste water from the Gold King Mine is seen in San Juan County, Colorado, in this picture released by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) taken August 7, 2015. A contaminated plume of waste water accidentally released from a Colorado gold mine by U.S. environmental agency workers has spread downstream and reached northern New Mexico, officials said on Saturday. Picture taken August 7, 2015. REUTERS/EPA/Handout ...
It’ll be interesting when this spill is used as a reason for more regulation.
It was just an accident no harm no foul move along keep moving nothing to see here ...
Yellow mine waste water is seen at the entrance to the Gold King Mine in San Juan County, Colorado, in this picture released by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) taken August 5, 2015. A contaminated plume of waste water accidentally released from a Colorado gold mine by U.S. environmental agency workers has spread downstream and reached northern New Mexico, officials said on Saturday. REUTERS/EPA/Handout
Farmington, NM population 45,000
shut off intakes of river water
Providing water for 60,000 + people $$$$$$$
The EPA needs to take responsibility for this. That said, it doesn’t seem to me to be the great catastrophe it’s being set up as.
Its the heavy metals that will be of most concern..
Thank goodness its not flammable..
How do you keep the deer, elk and other wild animals from drinking the water along a 75 mile stretch of river?
I wonder how much gold is in it.
These are the same EPA morons that insisted on digging and dredging the Hudson river sediment to roil up the PCBs that had since become completely covered with sediment thus dropping PCB levels to practically nothing.
Now they have stirred it all up again.
Gov’t sign says a mine is at fault. Bass turds.
Hi,
I’m from the gub mint,
And I’m here to help.
bump
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