Free Republic

It was a dirty river before, it’s a dirtier river now, we’re moving on. That sums up the attitude of EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy who testified before two Senate committees today. Democratic lawmakers made excuses for the agency while Republicans hammered at McCarthy to take responsibility for the rusty contaminated sludge her agency unleashed on the Animas River and across three states. ... Has anyone been fired for …? ... Colorado’s Sen. Cory Gardner attended both hearings, and drilled McCarthy on the agency’s appalling lack of telephone etiquette – downstream users weren’t notified until days after the incident. When Gardner...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Anger was mounting Monday at the federal Environmental Protection Agency over the massive spill of millions of gallons of toxic sludge from a Colorado gold mine that has already fouled three major waterways and may be three times bigger than originally reported. An 80-mile length of mustard-colored water -- laden with arsenic, lead, copper, aluminum and cadmium -- is working its way south toward New Mexico and Utah, following Wednesday's accidental release from the Gold King Mine, near Durango, when an EPA cleanup crew destabilized a dam of loose rock lodged in the mine. The crew was...