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EPA Admits Spilling Millions Of Gallons Of Toxic Waste Into Colorado River - Stunning Aerial Footage
By John Vibes via TheAntiMedia.org,
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the federal organization in charge of fining and arresting people and companies for damage done to the environment, spilled over a million gallons of toxic waste into the Animas river in Colorado this week. The waste came from an abandoned mining operation and turned the entire river a disgusting shade of bright orange.
The EPA admitted earlier this week that the spill occurred while workers from the agency were using heavy machinery to open the Gold King Mine, an operation that was shut down some time ago. While trying to enter the mine, the machines busted a shaft that was filled with wastewater, creating a leak into the river.
At first, the EPA attempted to downplay the spill and act like there was nothing wrong, but they were heavily criticized for those initial statements.
Dave Ostrander, the EPA’s regional director told reporters in a later statement that “It’s hard being on the other side of this.”
“We are very sorry for what happened. This is a huge tragedy. It’s hard being on the other side of this. Typically we respond to emergencies; we don’t cause them. … It’s something we sincerely regret,” he said.
However, some people are not willing to let the EPA off that easily, even some politicians have rightly pointed out that the EPA should be treated in the same way that any company or private individual would be treated if they poisoned the river.
U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton, who is from the area where the spill occurred said the EPA must pay for their mistake.
“If a mining operator or other private business caused the spill to occur, the EPA would be all over them. The EPA admits fault and, as such, must be accountable and held to the same standard,” Tipton said.
In a statement released this Thursday, Taylor McKinnon, of the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, said that
“Endangered species downstream of this spill are already afflicted by same toxic compounds like mercury and selenium that may be in this waste. Taylor McKinnon, of the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement Thursday. “These species are hanging by a thread, and every new bit of toxic exposure makes a bad situation worse. EPA’s downplaying of potential impacts is troubling and raises deeper questions about the thoroughness of its mine-reclamation efforts.”
Aerial footage below:
The EPA actually has no concern for the environment, they just happen to use the environment as a cover story to create laws and gain an advantage for the companies that lobbied for exemptions to the agency’s regulations, and to collect money in fines. There are solutions outside the common government paradigm, and that is mainly the ability for individuals, not governments, to hold polluters personally and financially accountable.
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Yours would'nt, but ours would.
Yummy, might as well fuck EVERYTHING up in one swell foop.
the epa got the gold mine, the fish got the shaft
Did they run the previous owners out of business so they could take over mining operations? Wtf
the "libertarian" miners left the gubbermint to clean up their mess is what happened.
Sorry I need to puff another rock before you start making sense
The waste shaft was contained until our overlords decided to help.
Nah, it was already leaking and just needed a slight disturbance to gush out. True story. It was just a matter of time. Expect more man-made travesty's from our past to come haunting us in the future.
I'm not being sarcastic for those who can't tell.
Shut them down...like the coal industry!
Don't fret comrades! The government workers responsible for this mess will be likely be punished severely by being placed on leave (paid vacation), and upon their return, given promotions.
I am not going to accept that. They need to be promoted two grades first. then put on vacation. Then brought back into a diferent department, such as the department of energy, who handles our nuclear waste. Then forced into early retirement with two pensions above current grade. Then they should have to go work for a 501c5 (government employees union) and think really hard about what they did.
Thats what Obama did to those nasty IRS people. he even broke into national primetime TeeVee to show how strict he is about stuff like this.
the color looks awesome. it looks like a huge hommage to Holland :-)
I doubt that this hommage (sic) will ever reach Holland.
And this crap is headed for Las Vegas. Wonderful.
It will soon be clear that WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS WON'T STAY IN VEGAS!
Good news, Lake Mead will be rising. Bad news, it will be with poisonous industrial waste.
Sorry that we fucked up.
P.S. Send more money.
That's the color our pool turns when someone pee's in it...
"The Animas flows into the San Juan River in New Mexico, and the San Juan flows into Utah, where it joins the Colorado River in Lake Powell." [which is what keeps Vegas alive no?]
NO, further downstream is Lake Mead asshat.
just more "'merican exceptionalism"...
Thank you for pointing out his asshattedness!
I'm tired of some of the dumbshits on here. I have always enjoyed the relative openess of ZH discussions and the some of the more intellectual discussions of days gone by, but I just get a little tired of some of the dumbshits on here with not damn ounce of common sense.
Need someone to call other people for you? Jeez the morons are out today.
Please point out my mistake if you would Mr. I'm so fucking intelligent?
Powell flows into Mead you stupid tosser.
They said the mine stopped operations in something like 1923 but all of this has been a ticking time bomb since WHEN? Gold was
leached using cyanide by the likes of chemical giants like DuPont and De Gussa so the heavy metals have to include arsenic and cyanide.
It proabably lay "dormant" until our EPA heros stirred it up and now have launched it downriver to who knows where. Great job .gov.
No worry though. Teflon Don will hold our attention by orders to the MSM.
This release probably contains significant quantities of all the RCRA 8 heavy metals.
Arsenic (As),
Barium (Ba),
Cadmium (Cd),
Chromium (Cr),
Lead (Pb),
Mercury (Hg),
Selenium (Se), and
Silver (Ag).
http://www.hazardouswasteexperts.com/heavy-metal-waste-regulation-which-...
Nice job on the Google search and copy/paste.
Now tell us what RCRA stands for and what are the MCL's and direct contact standards for these metals. Or how about what EPA Method is used in the analysis of soil or water samples for RCRA metals.
Hell, I'll even go as far as stating you dont have a fucking clue which EPA Region this spill falls under. Or what the backgound levels of these naturally occurring metals in the Colorado River basin.
Worthless copy and paste troll with no real knowledge about anything environmental related.
Am I allowed to do another Google search, or should I just post my GPA for my Environmental Compliance degree?
Why would anyone give a shit about the terminology used by a bloated and ineffective .gov agency?
gold mining is a useless and barbarous relic
Here ya go Cali and Nevada, Free drinking water. It's on the house!!!!!
Again, why the inane comments about California and Nevada? The Animas is a beautiful pristine mountain river (at least above Durango) flowing out of the San Juan Mountains (amazing mountains) in Southwest Colorado. It flows pretty much directly south to NM and converges with the San Juan River in Farmington, then the San Juan flows up through the Four Corners, into Utah and into lake Powell. This has nothing to do with Nevada and California drinking water.
Because on ZH we have fucking fun. Thats why I said it. Fuck Cali. Does that make you feel better?
From Wikipedia...
In 2014, despite near-average runoff, the Bureau of Reclamation reduced for the first time the annual release from Lake Powell to Lake Mead, from 8.23 to 7.48 million acre-feet, in order to help recover levels at Lake Powell for power generation. This resulted in Lake Mead declining to the lowest level on record since the 1930s.
Lake Mead feeds Las Vegas.Now the EPA will be sued by an alphabet soup of Gaia Worshipper groups, settle the lawsuit, and the settlement will become the regulation. And they'll say there's no need for regulatory review, beause they're carrying out a settlement.
And THAT is how your environmental rules gets written.
Will they be fined and sent to jail?
I don't think so either. But, hey, try to build a pond on your property without their permission? It's off to the clink for you. Fart near a wet spot and it's a million dollar fine, sonny.
"What difference does it make?"
I think this should be the rallying cry for events that take place that you could "arguably" blame the incompetence of our government on. Also "What difference does it make?", because other than a scapegoat there will be zero accountability.
'Let them drink polluted water.' The modern day equivalent of "Let them eat cake."
IMHO, we are worse than Europe. European citizens wouldn't stand for this type of shit.
Sadly, I beg to differ>
http://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/saltburn-gill-pollution-...
This was on my doorstep, beautiful place for a day out with the kids, then wham.
It still trickles iron oxide to this day.
Wow, that is sad. WTF?
"There are solutions outside the common government paradigm, and that is mainly the ability for individuals, not governments, to hold polluters personally and financially accountable."
Every litigation attorney's wet dream, but not much of a path to justice.
That was no accident. That was deliberate release to get rid of this headache.
Oops I opened the gate. Really!!
It's probably just a concentrated lead, arsenic, cadmium and zink sludge. Good work! What were these government tools trying to do with this gold mine again?
EPA! EPA! EPA!
Right, this had nothing to do with the mine that generated the waste, the politicians they bought with some of their "profits", or the "regulations" those politicians wrote for the EPA.
That's a good sheep.
Nobody is disputing that every old mine site from back in the day is a toxic waste dump. Depending on the age of this mine there may have no regulations in place at all. The mine should have been forced to clean up their mess. The whole point is that the EPA is nothing but an enforcement arm of organized crime. Their uneven hand will shutter competition for those that are in their favor and they could give two shits less about the environment.
I know of numerous families that are losing their farms right now because of a flood that ocurred way back that deposited DDT into man made lakes on the properties. Government officials want millions in cleanup and they cant afford to pay. Guess who will end up with the land? Wasn't it the government that allowed the use of DDT to begin with?
With hundreds of atmospheric nuclear tests the government may be the biggest poluter of them all anyway.
Blah blah blah... Keep blaming the government all the while ignoring the fact that you are "the govenrment". Fucking retards everywhere. That which cannot be sustained, won't be, get off your ass and go do something about it you stupoid fuck.
My family fought this BS for generations, The Army Core of Engineers already saw too it that my family doesn't have a dog in the fight. Being that this is your land at risk might I suggest that you do something about it.
Nobody will do shit about it, because it happened in lazy-fuck-tard U.S.A.
What would you have us do? Voting does not work. For example, in 2016,we are going to get to chose between the third clinton term, or the fourth bush term. Armed resistance? look what they did to the Iraqi's who just wanted to sell their oil in Euros. (not even their own national currency) They got millions of tons of depleted uranium dumped on them. That stuff will be there for thousands of years. This stuff will gone in 50.
Serious question. I hear people say what you say a lot. What exactly are we supposed to do?
The EPA was established in 1970.
"Gold King is one of thousands of abandoned hard rock mines in the western U.S.—some dating back to the 19th-century Gold Rush—that left behind a legacy of waterway-threatening pollution that could take years and billions of dollars to clean up. The mine is owned by San Juan Corp., in Golden, Colo., and hasn’t operated since 1923, according to Ronald R. Hewitt Cohen, an associate professor at the Colorado School of Mines"
http://www.wsj.com/articles/colorado-spill-impact-widens-1439163937
Finally. This is in our backyard. been dealing with it for almost a week now.
Sorry to hear that. I hope it doesn't destroy your property. I remember you saying you owned a lot of acerage. Hope it doesn't make it worthless.
I like to kayak. The Animas is one of the bestr rivers, but it is a bit far north for us. We are just fine. The good news is that this is all heading right into the drinking water of all those progressive fucknuts in Nevada and California. Drink up assholes. Sucks that the Animas won't be safe for recreation or trout fishing. The tributaries will be however. this is simply part of Ben "nighthorse" Campbell's legacy. More to come...
Glad to hear you and the family will be ok.
Yea because the EPA is the same as the Mine operator who left the mess. I've heard the EPA is open fracking operations in a back yard near you.
It must be a blessing to have so little left of your mind .
They are completely different you idiot. The miner that "left the mess" is a legal entity tht kept the mess" out of the river. The EPA is an unlawful usurpation of power by the feds that fucked up a beautiful river.
Legality does not make right. This is the problem with capitalist logic, it uses legality to disappear the origins of commodities but often these commodities are as destructive in process as any future war or containment capacity. I ask you, what is the difference between mining and nuclear power? Of course, it is the potential destructive power and fragility of the future. Nuclear power reduces the destructive capabilities of industrialism to the absurd, but it is all part of the same logical process: that so long as the origin of the commodity remains invisible no one can be opposed to it.
Such industry must be cared for indefinitely, there must be permanent containment. Normally mines are left to rot and cause cancer in forgotten communities. But as expansion continues the probable loss of containment increases, and as such the real citizens and government agencies find themselves in danger too. Which feeds back into the original problem: a society cannot function properly under the ideology that capital expansion is right so long as the law says so. There is no ideal foundation possible in such a society as the logic precludes any sense of moral responsibility, only adherence to the law of exchange.
This is all that is happening now, a spreading of the problem to the point it cannot be ignored. And the same thing was always going on, even when the mining company first started. It was just easier to ignore then. But ignorance and relying on capitalist laws of commodities does not change the very real danger involved in mining (war, containment, permanent toxicity of the land). When you take up a dangerous and irresponsible action there will be equivalent or even greater destruction and responsibility. That goes beyond any laws of economy into the laws of physics and human behaviour.
Capitalism is a political form which diffuses government and bureaucracratic agencies so as to make power superfluous and responsibility for that power equally distributed. The effect is that it causes everyone to make invisible clothes for themselves rather than just invisible clothes for the emperor. That is the great power of capitalism, it makes people believe that politics is the enemy while their actions are in opposition to this enemy; and all the while the people take up the actions of government and simply give it another name. The people become political actors without even knowing it while the real politics is forced from a deeper, unseen, level. The people become responsible for all politics while they believe in a religion of economy. It is just a repetition of the French Revolution over and over - the invisible party causes events to happen and while everyone goes on discussing it and trying to figure out who is responsible that same invisible party causes more events to happen. There is no catching up. The people are left with nothing but to terrorize one another, and they cannot do so quickly enough, even if it were the right thing to do.
In a sense, capitalism is simply the creation of political derivatives, gambling on the future dangers and responsibilities that the future citizens must take on. Hedging current antifragility of economic power against future fragility of political power. I think this is similar to what de Toqueville said of America and the French Revolution. The peasants attempt to take more power at that point when they have already been given power; and the true power relinquishes itself at that point when it finds another means of progressing its power. Modern economy is an attempt to disquise political power, much in the same way capitalist businesses like to hide the waste required in the process of exchange within mountains or foreign countries - or rivers when all the crypto-exchanges become full.
Well considering that the mine has been inacive since 1923.....
It's the Orange Animas River we just made it Oranger.... so what difference does it make!!!
EPA demands the EPA be shut down immediately..before further damage occurs...well it could happen..LOL
The gov't is too big to jail...
How big is the fine going to be?
Better not touch their bonuses or pensions.
Likely the contractor they were using will bear the brunt of the problem
EPA is idea guys and pencil pushers, not even project managers.
Doesn't matter. Any fine from the government will go to the government.
I read that this river flows into the San Juan which flows into the Colorado river then into lake Powell. They are trying to divert this crap into settling ponds before it gets that far.
So who gets the "fine"? $$$$$
Oh, fucking no one, that's right.
Kill the EPA.
And the REST of the Fed gubbamint.
Its time to promote those within the government that are responsible
Commence the lawsuit. Really, what did anyone expect, it's the fucking government!
The dyke that runs the EPA needed a dike to hold this back?
Well when you've got a bull dyke lesbo in charge of anything......
Saw this Friday morning on RT. Keep up Tylers!
http://www.rt.com/usa/311858-colorado-mine-spill-orange/
Bitch on Bitchez!
Public beatings.
Bring back the cat o' nine tails. Then carve a swastika on their foreheads.
Why go easy on em? You some sort of pacifist?
The solution is easy....shutdown the EPA and fire all its employees.
Accountability in Government? Good luck with that!!
If you don't have water filtration, now's certainly the time to solve that shit
The EPA's diversity mandate and minority recruitment goals sure are paying off for America!!!!
they can't help it
they were born that way
we must include them to be truely diverse
If they are going to fine the EPA for this one instance of negligence/stupidity/bad luck, how much should they fine the Obama Administration for all its fuck ups which occur on a daily basis?
"the EPA should be treated in the same way that any company or private individual would be treated if they poisoned the river"
Yeah, they will. The taxpayer will foot the bill as usual. When is industry ever held accountable? The entire history of the coal industry is one long environmental disaster.
Oh an apology.
Thank you all is forgiven.
Next please.
Oh Mr. Trump! I believe you are in the wrong line.
Next please.
"Pay for their mistakes". With what? Taxpayer money? The only way they can pay for their mistakes is to lose their jobs. Shut down the whole operation which would be a savings to the taxpayer. Remake the EPA into a dozen competent people, that audit and check on the state level EPA departments. Make them answerable to local citizen watchdog groups. That's all we really need out there.
And they expect us to believe that shutting down existing coal-fired power plants and destroying West Virginia's economy has anything to do with helping the environment.
You forget the acid rain caused by coal plants before stack scrubbers. There was no big mystery the downwind sulfer plumb could be seen from space. Carbon dioxide is just a little more subtle.
I know that you do not care about he rest of the world, but the big glaciers that supply the water to most of the world's population have been retreating at an ACCELERATING rate. All hell is going to break loose when the Nile and the Yallow and the Gangez run dry.
West Virginia is beautiful country and had amazing people who can create other employment, the sooner that is stops being an coal addict the better.
No large dinos are found in what was the tropics the last time carbon monoxide was as high as it is today because the tropics were close to uninhabitable swinging wildly from drought to flood.
They have stack scrubbers now. So what's the point in shutting them down on purpose again? Nothing they're doing now is as bad as anything the EPA just did in the above article. West Virginians are creating their own employment. By mining their own natural resources. Unlike solar companies, Tesla, etc. who need the government create employment for them. I know you don't care about putting people in industries you don't like on the unemployment line because of your own ideaology, but until another power source can replace half of our electricity without jacking up our utility bills, we need coal.
Shit head -- Even pristine lakes in northern canada (far from any human habitation) are contaminated with mercury fall out FROM COAL BURNING. Sorry if your electric bill goes up a few cents, or you lost your coal mining job. But tough shit. The rest of the world doesn't need the mercury and acid rain everywhere.
Did anything come from Obama with the words boot, neck, EPA in it?
raycist, you got a problem with orange rivers? weeping cheetoe and angillo mozilla will probably file a lawsuit.
Putin for President.
At least with Putin, if someone f'ks up, HEADS ROLL.
Perfect example of why lust for gold will destroy us. Terrible for the environment. This is why I refuse to buy precious metals. Look what the love of gold has done.
Everything we do has an impact but today we have ways to refine & mine gold that are much cleaner. It's a choice and a bad one not to do so. This is from the 1920's and buying no gold today has zero power to clean that up from almost 100 years ago.
Fail. Dead wrong.
The epa shut down plans for a mega mine in alaska, that would have included a huge, open toxic waste pond right next the the last pristine salmon streams. None of these mines would ever be profitable if they didn't leave lakes of toxic waste behind.
Every one of these lakes will eventually leak into the nearest rivers. Too much rain overflows them. Or the dirt berms wash away causing the kind of disaster we see in this story.
100 years ago?
Fail for you.
Most gold you would buy today was mined a long, long time ago.
But mining for lithium, coal and natural gas/oil to build and power your tablet, laptop and cell phone is okay.
Nevermind the gold contacts in every computer used to mine your fairy alternate cryptocurrency.
F'ing retard.
Actually the government seems to hate gold.
Our disaster of a president and every EPA department head should have to take a couple of big gulps of that water then swim in it for an hour.
Problem solved.
had an idea, we know that there are thousands of epa employees, so why dont we have from the top down have them all drink water out of the river and filter it with their kidneys. then they could piss it out and the river would go from orange to yellow.
problem solved, and then from the hospitals they are all admitted to they can announce that everything is okay.
Will Obamacare cover that?
Only after the very high deductibles are paid and then after that only 60%.
another taxpayer bail out
Why Was The Environmental Protection Agency Messing With A Mine Above Silverton?
Enter The Environmental Protection Agency
For years, the EPA has wanted to name areas around Silverton as a Superfund site. This brings funding for cleanups. The town, in turn, has resisted, fearing the label would be toxic to tourism. (pun intended.)
Recently, the town and the agency came to a sort of detente. The EPA wouldn’t list the site as Superfund, also called the National Priority List, as long as efforts were made to improve water quality near the mines. The EPA agreed to pay for those efforts, which recently got underway.
Somewhat ironically, the Gold King mine was not the object of the cleanup. The agency had planned to plug a mine [.pdf] just below it, the Red and Bonita Mine, with the goal of reducing acid runoff from that mine.
http://www.kunc.org/post/why-was-environmental-protection-agency-messing-mine-above-silverton#stream/0
So WHY was the EPA trying to open this mine?
Now you are asking real questions; you are an anti-government environmental terrorist. (sarc)
Because the mine below was already channeling, leaking acid runoff into the watershed.
So the EPA fucked up. They're human. All humans fuck up eventually.
But, really????
"There are solutions outside the common government paradigm, and that is mainly the ability for individuals, not governments, to hold polluters personally and financially accountable."
Somebody earlier in this thread stated that this mine had been closed in 1923. Good luck finding the companies and individuals resposible for pouring a million gallons of toxic sludge into a mine shaft and leaving it there for future generations to clean up. Here is why the EPA was there, along with a summary of some of the politics behind their activity. Basically, the entire upper Animas watershed would have been declared a Superfund site but for the locals screaming that it would hurt tourism. So they all compromised and called it a "Priority Site" and the Feds promised to fund the cleanup.
http://www.kunc.org/post/why-was-environmental-protection-agency-messing...
Go here to read a good article about the hurdles facing plaintiffs in groundwater contamination cases. One private individual could never fund a case against a large mining corporation, so class actions are the only viable way to nail them to the cross:
http://www.burackenvironmentallaw.com/groundwater_toxic_tort.shtml
No doubt this massive discharge is doing more harm that the slow leaching was doing. I haven't heard anybody at the EPA crowing about governmental immunity or saying nobody will be compensated for their actual damages. It would be extremely naive to expect an agency rep to invite everybody and anybody to send in a claim and expect a fat check to be sent out ASAP. I suspect that they will eventually set up some kind of claims facility and pay out some barely adequate amount of money to those who can prove they suffered direct harm.
This is overall a troubling ethical issue. In another context, if a doctor stops and renders aid at a freeway pile-up, and it turns out he saves some lives but also fucks up and harms somebody, should he be held liable for the one act of malpractice? If the Gold King Mine mess was created by long-dead people almost a century ago, if the feds screw up trying to clean up this mess, should they be held liable for their negligent efforts, or should they get a free pass for being good samaritans?
What comes next are the environmental groups to line their pockets with fund raising activities...community organizers.
"...Good luck finding the companies and individuals resposible for pouring a million gallons of toxic sludge into a mine shaft and leaving it there for future generations to clean up..."
Nobody poured a million (it was actually three million) into the mine besides mother nature, herself. The 'toxic sludge' is the stuff that normally leaches out of the walls of a hard-rock mine where the rock is high in sulfates. Nobody poured anything into the mine - that crap has been leaching out of the walls and flowing out of the mine for the last 90 years. The ONLY thing different about this spill is that the EPA had San Juan plug one of hte mine enterances to stop the constant outflow of mine drainage. They were just gnawing away at some of the earthen plug to see how much drainage had backed up behind it. Apparently, nobody thought to talk to a mining engineer who could have assured them that:
1) The three million gallons that NORMALLY would have flowed out of the mine for eight months or so (since the EPA plugged it) wasn't going anywhere
2) It would have been under considerable pressure by now, and
3) Digging a little hole in a earthen plug to see what was happening inside would lead to the hole becomming rather large in short order
So the EPA certainly has a lot of the blame here. But it's not entirely their fault - it started a few decades before with Sunnyside Mining's lame-assed attempt to plug up THEIR leaky mines at elevations below the Gold King mine. They all drain into Cement Creek and that's what everyone was trying to clean up. Sunnyside worked out some deal with the government where they could plug up THIER mines fifteen or so years ago and walk away without any further liability - rather than clean up THIER leaky mines. That's what they did, and after their mines filled to the brim, the higher-up mines started to fill up and drain like crazy. The EPA was trying to fix the drainage from Gold King (and other higher mines) rather than fix the real problem. Sunnyside - now owned by Kinross - doesn't want the site designated as a Superfund site because they might end up on the hook for more of the clean-up costs. Silverton doesn't want to discourage tourism and future mining (!) so some of the residents there have objected to the EPA declaring the area a Superfind site.
While everyone is bitching back and forth, the lower mines plug in the American Tunnel remains - and probably has 20x the toxic drainage backed up behind it. It would make sense to fix THAT problem (Superfund or not) and not try to plug leaks or treat drainage futher up the mountain where it's finally pouring out. So fuck Sunnyside/Kinross and fuck anybody from Silverton that doesn't want the problem fixed. It's a waste of time throwing money at the higher mines when all that crap behind the American Tunnel plugs are ready to blow or keep backing up and leaking into Cement Creek.
Now they got the worst possbile outcome - the Gold King blowing out and the focus on that instead of figuring out how to mediate the tens or hundreds of millions of gallons in the American Tunnel. Taxpayers will get stuck with some expensive-assed limestone remediation plant cleaining up the uppper mines, while the potential for a much larger American Tunnel disaster is ignored.
What do you do and how do you know the backstory? Interesting read.
I work for the NSA.
We just know stuff. Whatever we don't, we Google (but we own that, too).
I love then the government puts on a magic show!
Accountability, now you see it, now you don't!
Is this the "You had _one_ job" story of the week?
I'm sure the EPA takes full responsibility and will clean it up pronto..... with your money.
See what happens when guvment parasites try to do real work. Guess they better stick to destroying our jobs/country as they seem better at that.
Boy,,, if anyone else had made that mistake, it be all over for them.
This is one way to get Helicopter Money. Now the EPA owes each of us a fat $500.00 check.
wait a second here... so, a bunch of toxic wastewater was just dumped into a random mine shaft and left there. this is standard practice? lol, what a shithole.
The mine waste was leftover from the 1920's. It has been an ongoing problem.
So by virtue of "last one to touch it", the EPA is at fault here basically.
totally standard
The EPA is a fiction. Fictions do do jack shit. Hold the people responsible accountable, and then we will see how sorry you are.
Is there anything you worthless fucks in Govt. can do right?
Yeah, they can destroy the planet quicker than anyone else. How would you like Nuclear Winter?
Cry Me A River.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbwjQSBH0sE
Yellow River
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJ5-FoiBuVc
The punishment should be the abolishment of the EPA and for each state, region and locality to decide on how best to manage their resources. Along with that, the Department of Education should be abolished for all the toxic pollution they have spewed into the brains of our children. We could go on, but fining the EPA does nothing except add to the tax payer. The EPA has been used for corporate profits for years & the abuse of people's property rights; just look into the sky and ask what the aerosols that are polluting the skies are and why this is allowed. Ask why the EPA doesn't crack down or even investigate the chemicals that Haliburton uses. We are a nation in severe decline where it counts; morally.
here's another picture
https://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/daily-morning-awesomeness-40-photos-18.jpg
Nice hexavalent chromium yellow in that pic!
another picture...
There's gold in them thar hills
Are these the same EPA idiots that shrugged shoulders when asked about the unknown materials being laid into the upper atmosphere of the planet in an effort to whiten the skies. They need to be defunded and closed down for good. everything goob touches gets fucked up one way or another.
Typically we respond to emergencies; we don’t cause them.
No, no, no! .GIVE never ever causes problems, this former official misspoke! What do you mean you saw a YouTube video??? That YouTube server has dissappeared.
The LAW doesn't apply to our Lordship, the Government. For the Government, it's do as I SAY, not as I DO!
Tragic, and while you still would not want to drink it - the orangish color is caused more by the silt and clay that got washed into the river along with the toxic crap. The Mississippi River is not called the Mighty Muddy for nothing. Often it is the stuff in water that you cannot see that is the real killer!
USA sounds worse than Russia and China!!
Nah, Murica is moar exceptionaller than those other places.
Water is boring, this brownish color gives it more taste... like new coke
They're sorry
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9u0EL_u4nvw
That video is about BP and the spill in the Gulf. But it IS related to the EPA.
Do you realize that the two largest skimmer ships in the world were on site 3 or 4 days after the spill began? Those ships could process HUNDREDS of times the volume of water of ALL the US skimmer ships combined.
BUT the EPA and Obama wouldn't let them operate !!!! They went home a week later (Netherlands and Norway)
Obama FINALLY gave in and told the EPA to allow them to operate FOUR MONTHS LATER, but only after the equipment had been installed on US ships, and after massive damage was already done.
Politics trumped the environment.
What are the NAMES of the people that supervised this?
This is a textbook example of what is wrong in this country.
While tyrannies love to isolate and punish people as part of their reign of terror, where we have an EXACT example of the state and its minions killing the people and land, yet WHO is responsible?
Where is the public interest media digging into this?
Where are the names?
Do you even have the slightest clue how dangerous working on a channeling mountainside is?
Lets see you put in the drain lines to stablize the slope while you might be buried in a mudslide at any moment.
Do you even have the slightest clue about the point he was trying to make?
Do you?
"What are the NAMES of the people that supervised this?"
Since working on a wet slope is dangerous, there is a high risk. The supervisors did not create the risky situation. They were lucky to not get buried in a slide.
This is a textbook example of what is wrong in this country.
No this is a textbook example of a guy who wants to be able to throw is toxic shit into the water or air, and dislikes the EPA. Probably a planet burner coal/oil addict who cares not a fig for anything beyond his personal bank account.
While tyrannies love to isolate and punish people as part of their reign of terror, where we have an EXACT example of the state and its minions killing the people and land, yet WHO is responsible?
The people who engineered the mine are long dead.
Where is the public interest media digging into this?
Where do you think this article came from?
Where are the names?
You mean the names of the HEROS who were risking being buried alive to try to keep the acid lechate out of the watershed? If it was leaking for years it was channeling for years. The next thing that happens is a big slide.
It's not about danger, it's about politics and responsability.
It is about a bunch of office chair chumps who have no idea what they are talking about or how difficult and dangerous the situation was/is.
Fight the yeast in the East and get rid of the EPA dyke leader. Defund the EPA for crimes against humanity.
Well, actually there is NO Law anymore. Not in the sense of the Law applying to all entities equally. It's all just the best politics that money can buy now.
• All elections in the United States of America are rigged by the rich and have predetermined winners;
• Law Enforcement are nothing but political enforcers, leg breakers if you will;
• The Courts are nothing but sham show trials, in the finest tradition of Josef Stalin and Adolph Hitler;
• The prisons are nothing but slave labor gulags and corporate profit centers;
There is more freedom in Russia today than in the United States of America. I never thought that I'd see the day for that.
+1000
An utter bullshit frame,
This is like the surgeon being blamed for the black lung of a miner.
I have seen several nameless 50 or 60 yr old embayments and coffer dams in the Cumberland mountains do what the Kingston Ash ponds did and release toxic mud slides in to the watershed. First they begin to leak at the base, then a whole chunk of the face slides off and away it goes.
Working on one of these old earthen dams to save it is always a crapshoot, and there is always a risk of getting buried if the mountinside starts to slide. I seriously doubt many of the commenters here have the balls to be anywhere around one of these situations.
The water in the mine was already channeling through the substrate, and probably would have blown after the next big rain. The persons really responsible would be the owners of the orininal mine who walked away with no windmill powered pumps in place or a plan to seal the shafts from ground water or remediate the site.
Nonsense.
If it happened to be the mine owner who ACCIDENTALLY caused that spill (just like the EPA), the EPA would be ALL OVER them, and threatening fines of hundreds of millions, seizing their assets, PUBLICLY SHAMING the company and individual executives, along with threatening to throw them in jail.
Do you think the EPA would give the mine owner a pat on the back, and say everything's forgiven just becasue the mine owner apologized?
Because the mine owner designed and created the situation.
The EPA was just trying to deal with what was there.
And I seriously question why you keep trying to deflect the issue here.
>I seriously doubt many of the commenters here have the balls to be anywhere around one of these situations.
To generalize is to be an idiot.
William BlakeStandard Disclaimer: Are you an idiot?
No you are an idiot on a hobby horse.
The EPA did not design the mine or profit from the mine operations.
What choice did the EPA have, to try to fix it or let it leak.
They could have photoshoped the pictures, for Christ sake