Posted on 08/10/2015 2:54:07 AM PDT by LSUfan
The city of Durango and La Plata County, Colorado, have declared a state of emergency after a federal cleanup crew accidentally released mine waste into the water.
An estimated 1 million gallons of waste water spilled out of an abandoned mine area in the southern part of the state last week, turning the Animas River orange and prompting the Environmental Protection Agency to tell locals to avoid it.
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 near 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 River.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
I worked at various Superfund “remediation” sites for the FedGov in the late 80s. It was the biggest scam up to that time. We were at remote sites in the arctic pulling up materials from WWII . Spent uncounted millions on nothing.
I’ll never forget when we got the call at a particular job—we had just sampled and containerized around 30K barrels. As soon as we were done, they came back and said our containers no longer met the new Federal standard and we would have to repack the entire site. I always wondered which Senator’s brother owned the container contract.
I worked for some years as an environmental attorney working for Fortune 500 companies.
Had this been one of those companies, it would be front page news everyday, criminal indictments would be threatened (Probably not actually issued) and million of dollars of fines handed out. Emergency consent decrees issued and every dime the EPA could figure out how to spend would be tacked onto the bill. (And, man, can they spend money!)
Oldplayer
If you are talking about the Deepwater Horizon spill while drilling the Mercado in 2010, The rig was not blown over with water. The fire melted steel; the floating rig lost boyancey and it sank. The Coast Guard didn't cause that spill.
I would like to know if the actual workers creating the spill were EPA workers or EPA contractors.
I really can’t visualize an EPA worker hands on in a job like this
I was once very interested in disbanding the EPA, or repealing the "EPA law". I even went to the point of having a crack at drafting legislation.
But, it's not so simple.
The "EPA" was not created by Congress, and, should it cease to exist, the laws it is charged with enforcing would still be on the books. Those laws, passed by Congress and signed by four Presidents between 1955 and 1970, grant legislative authority to the President and command that he "end pollution in all waters of the United States", etc, etc.
The EPA problem exists because those laws exist. It's the laws that are unreasonable, not the particular executive mechanism for seeing that they are enforced.
Now, it's true that grants of legislative authority to unaccountable bureaucrats + a President who hates America causes big problems.
But, the EPA was created to SIMPLIFY enforcement of laws that previously required environazis at Agriculture, Interior, Justice, Health, Education, and Welfare, Commerce, Labor, and many other entities within the Executive Branch.
End the EPA and leave the laws that made it necessary in place, and you will simply multiply the bureaucracy twenty-fold.
The bureaucrats will get all the overtime they need and rewarded for their hard work. They are from the government and here to help...
We had several Superfund sites around my hometown. Basically every factory, etc. that used to employ thousands, now only employ government contractors.
The cleanups have extended for decades, almost as long as the original industries were there.
Nixon’s legacy. Statist jerk that he was.
The mine has been closed since the 20’s IIRC.
Yeah, they’ll pay, with our money.
Those are much ‘law’ as the ‘gun control act of ‘XX’ is ‘law’, or the new ‘treaty authority’, or ...
Course, I guess, when your bread is buttered by the same pool of ill gotten gains (taxpayers), you’re less than NOT willing to rock the boat on unconstitutional acts.
Bunch of a**-hats. They're running around a mine that is already closed down and trashed (now, thanks to them) almost certainly never to reopen. They've got heavy equipment on hand - hey, they already used it to eff things up. How hard is it to figure out how to make a temporary coffer to halt or drastically reduce the flow?
It is (was) a beautiful river.
The EPA has NO money... it’s all taxpayers’ money.
So with this ongoing eff-up they are threatening recreation, tourism, and drinking water / ag water across a pretty good swath of the southwestern US. Everything from the indian reservations of SW Colorado and NW New Mexico through the drinking water for Las Vegas, Phoenix, LA, and water for So-Cal ag including the Imperial valley.
You'd almost think they wanted/needed another crisis/opportunity, and here one is for them.
You would use the law to oppose socialism? But it is upon the law that socialism itself relies. Socialists desire to practice legal plunder, not illegal plunder. Socialists, like all other monopolists, desire to make the law their own weapon. And when once the law is on the side of socialism, how can it be used against socialism? - Socialism Is Legal Plunder - Bastiat
DEFUND/DISMANTLE domestic socialist collectives
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
https://www.federalregister.gov/agencies
UNaccountable bureaucrats are socialists.
The should round up some of the fracker peeps they put out of business who are used to hauling bad water around.
That's the government's way of saying "We f***** up really bad".
Most likely they will be PROMOTED!
The articles keep saying they were “using heavy equipment to enter the mine”. I can hear an excuse brewing.
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