This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Geologist Who Predicted Colorado River Disaster Interviewed, Slams "Deceptive" EPA
As we previously noted, in a July 30 letter to the editor of the Silverton Standard, Taylor predicted that the EPA project to plug the Red and Bonita mine would fail "within 7 to 120 days," and the 500 gallons per minute flow of toxic waste from those mines which the project stopped temporarily would resume again. The retired geologist who predicted the EPA project that caused the 3 million gallon toxic spill into the Animas River in Colorado would fail, speaks to Breitbart News...
Here are his thoughts after the EPA's disaster...
“The EPA was basically deceptive. They were saying we’re going to plug the Red and Bonita mine with a hydrostatic reinforced concrete plug, then we’re going to see what will happen,” Taylor says in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News.
"The Gold King mine was already plugged by someone else years ago with wood timbers, rocks and mud, and it was exfiltrating an unknown quantity of water, and they decided to remove that old plug so they could see the true quantity of water it was leaking,” according to Taylor.
“That old plug in the Gold King mine was kind of unstable material,” he notes.
“It was incompetent and stupid for them to go up to that existing plug and try to remove it without knowing how much water was upstream and behind it and what the hydrostatic pressure was,” Taylor says.
“The plug was stable until they fooled around with it. Once they disturbed it, that’s what activated the blowout,” he adds.
“I have another letter coming out in the Silverton Standard paper where I clarify that I did not precisely predict this blowout,” Taylor admits to Breitbart News. “In my second letter I said I just can’t believe they were so … incompetent that they would go in there and attempt to do this –unplug the Gold King mine–without a backup plan.”
“When you’re fooling around with something like this, you better have a backup plan particularly when there’s a whole town immediately down river,” Taylor says.
...
Taylor has an extensive 47-year career as a professional geologist.
“I am not an academic type geologist. I am a hands on geologist. I worked for myself most years. I worked gold mines in Australia. I’ve been around the mining business a lot. In St. Louis I did work for Doe Run Mining. I did maybe 20 or 30 projects for them, some in and around Viburnum, Missouri.”
“My work was in ground water control. I probably repaired over four hundred leaking lakes in my career,” Taylor adds. A graduate of Drury College in Springfield, Missouri, Taylor was born and raised in St. Louis. After his career as a geologist, Taylor says, “we decided to move out here [to Farmington, New Mexico] and build a house.”
“I put my travel trailer in Silverton all summer. I ride around on my ATV and prospect for gold and silver.”
When asked if anyone from the EPA has attempted to contact him about his letter predicting a catastrophic spill, Taylor was emphatic in his response.
“No,” he says. “They don’t want to talk to me because they’re the experts.”
“That’s one thing about the government. They never gave any thought to the possibility this thing could blow. ‘If we take the plug out, there will still be just 100 gallon per minute coming out’ is what they thought.”
We leave it to Taylor to sum it all up...
It is because of the bad attitude of the federal government bureaucrats, and especially those at EPA, that throughout his career, Taylor avoided undertaking projects for them.
“Whenever I worked for them, I always dreaded it because they have such a know-it-all attitude. That’s how they got in trouble on this deal. They just didn’t think,” Taylor says.
»
- 38601 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
oh no...
not breitbart :-P
Stay away from balconies, hot tubs, construction sites and air travel!
Two words that are not compatible: Government and Listen.
Or government and competence
This is exactly what concerns me about the Oligarchs plans to institute Technocarcy/Scientific Dictatorship as the global form of government. Basically the technocracy is run by "experts" with dictatorial powers. So imagine the whole world run by people like these self annointed "experts" from the EPA. What a disaster it's going to be.
The only inconvenience the EPA suffered in this incident was having to draft a press release that it happened. And I'll bet you there were people inside the EPA screaming that they shouldn't even do that.
The EPA is why the word "unaccountable" was invented. It doesn't matter how bad they fuck up, nothing changes and they keep right on going. In short, they don't give a fuck because it doesn't affect them.
And, by the way, if you were in need of a geologist (you needed to move a mountain or something) and you had your choice between the EPA's top geologist at no cost or Mr. Taylor for $250-large a year, which one would you choose? That's what I thought.
Kinda surprised he didn't get Ft Marcy Park'd...
IRS audit and EPA investigation into his off-the-grid prospecting in 5...4....3....2...
"Taylor predicted that the EPA project to plug the Red and Bonita mine would fail "within 7 to 120 days,"
as anybody who watches cop shows knows very well, the guy who phones in the tip is the guy who dunnit.
Forensics 101
whistleblower = perpetrator.
the EPA should vigorously defend itself against any suggestion that it wilfully, knowingly, deliberately acted to harm Gaia.
and it can best do that by bringing an action against this individual that sends a clear message to anyone who might consider making such thoughtless and reckless accusations in the future against the Nation's Guardian of Earth.
He's not an "academic" so better ignore him. Unless you're from Hahrvaard or Princeton, you don't know anything.
Only those grads from the Ivory Towers shit odorless stools.
He's building a house. All sorts of things can happen. Like accedent things. Fatal things. Spike guns to the head, upper spine or heart. Falls. Falls with 4x4s landing, repeatedly on the head, face and neck. Followed by cinder blocks. And a fire.
Yup. Might dangerous. Yessum.
Now his ATV. Well he's as good as gone!
no cost? so the advise is worthless, as proven.
Mike Judge envisioned it and put it down in movie form. It's called Idiocracy.
I am Chumbawamba.
Reminds me of the movie 'Ghost Busters' when the dickless government guy turned off the containment field and let all the monsters loose. Art predicts dickless EPA.
No, no, no. I have heard it from the Left my whole life. The core message is that all the good people, the smart people and the caring people are in government. The bad people, the stupid people, the uncaring are all in the private/free sector. That is why it is so essential that we all be controlled. It is for our own good.
I worked with an executive director a few years ago who was acollege graduate, prepared taxes for people on the side and at first seemed fairly intelligent. Not long after she got the position we were having a conversation about the IRS. Long story short I said the the government did not make any money. She said they did. I asked her how. She stared at me and then said she knew the IRS made money. I again said they did not make any money. She said all the people from the IRS she had talked with were very smart and she trusted them.
Blew my mind.
By the way she resigned in disgrace and between her and a bureaucrat we were closed 10 months later. Sheeple what are you gonna do.
Government and liberty
Government & competence....
And nailguns
He is likely OK since he is simply saying it was stupidity. If someone with his expertise starts saying it was intential and pointing out how it might benefit any particular group or agenda then that person better beware.
breitbart brigade fire for effect,
O V E R !
Well, if he's speaking to Breitbart he must be lying. Even though he penned his letter before the "accident", he's still lying.
Premeditated falsehood's before the fact, BRILLIANT!
We're from the government and we're to help you.....
I love how the ignorant government is so ignorant of their ignorance.
That's known as being an "engaged employee."
We are sorry and feel really bad about this is the excuse I am going to use next time I get sideways with the law. Hope it works as well as for that EPA cunt.
I'm not sure it's ignorance so much as it is arrogance. Of course, knowing our government, it's probably both...but they don't care.
it was not incompetence
EPA:
Expert & Proud Assholes
“Whenever I worked for them, I always dreaded it because they have such a know-it-all attitude. That’s how they got in trouble on this deal. They just didn’t think
Sums up government fiscal, foreign, monetary and regulatory activities generally.
Have contracted for governments, can confirm. Planners and "project managers" are generally the worst. Their arrogance over issues on which they do not even rise to the level of layperson is astounding. The final straw for me was being directed to do things in a way that blatantly violated state law and would force me to risk licensure (more bullshit, for another day). It's not surprising coming from people who bear no responsibility for their actions.
Well sometimes they are not "know-it-alls", but rather "know-nothings", such as the SEC or the CFTC. Those regulators take the view that Wall Street are the "experts" and so therefore are the only one qualified to (self) regulate. So, you get the regulators putting their heads in the sand over HFT market manipulation and client frontrunning because Wall Street says the purpose of HFT is to provide liquidity.
It's worked quite well.
The "tree huggers" are blaming this on a lack of funding for EPA! Astonishing!
"We have to pull the plug to see what's behind it" DOH!
That would be "tree huggerbots." The way people have been indoctrinated to react appropriately along red/blue lines to any and all news is astounding.
It is not astounding if you know the scientific methodology used and the massive funds allocated to induce the most profitable behavior by the most sheeple.
Nicely done Chunga!
It's infuriating and makes no fucking sense. They can't make the distinction between protecting the environment and this crappy bloated agency.
The same fucking thing happened when Fukushima popped. At the beginning, the red teamers were laughing it was no big deal just a non-issue dreamt up radical extremists.
This is the essence of divide/conquer...blind stupidity.
Earth First protested oil trains and blocked tracks in Maine the day before the Megantic disaster. While the RR was found to be negligent, I still suspect the eco terrorists had a hand in it. They were also responsible for arson and vandalism in Maine previously.
Chunga,
That's ALL of any governments solution for any and everything, more of your money
It's the strategy of your people -- de-fund and politicize government agencies, appoint crony beaureucrats to run them, then when they fail they can say "See, I told you so".
_"... plugged ... with wood timbers, rocks and mud, and it was exfiltrating ..."
There's a dollar denominated financial allegory in there somewhere.
File under, 'Corky Thatcher runs a trackhoe'.
Incompetence, the excuse for all occasions.
"We aren't evil, we're just stupid."
doubled up
And since we work for the gubnment, no one expects much better from us.
I hope this man stays alive. When I told a prominent orthopedic surgeon he was incompetent and I refused to do what he insisted, I was just fired.
I completely respect this man for his stance and standing firm to Goliath and will gladly contribute to a fund if he needs help. I can't imagine what they could do to him.
Miffed
I see a random IRS audit in his future.
chunga --- nice flag; EPA budget $8.2 BILLION; EPA employess 17,000. now that is a lot of pollution. a steaming heaping pile of shit
..just a fraction of the steaming mountain of sh*t that is the Department of State
He should bill the government for his advice.
Been there, done that with a surgeon that I was working for. And it pretty much blackballed me in my community as a result. All I did was to question a surgeon's instuctions to me as to how a patient was to be treated, based on anatomy. What he was ordering would actually fail, due to human anatomy. He drug me into an operating room to attempt to embarrass me in front of the staff, pointing to this and that and explaining in a condescending manner, why my anatomical knowledge was incorrect. Of course, the smart thing would have been to thank him for the correction. Instead, I gave him a packet of major medical research articles (the gold standard for that topic) the next day and explained, again, trying to engage him in a serious dialogue. He cast htem aside and said, "Well, they are all wrong." Work went to hell after that. The next week he ordered me to do some care that would violate Medicare regualtions, seriously, and be tantamount to fraud. Told me I would do it, immediately. I walked out to his screams of "Nobody has ever walked out on me!"
Needless to say, all the other employers in the area, being dependent upon his busines, wanted anythign to do with me. But after 30+ years in the healthcare business, being forced out was the best thing that ever happened to me.
I kept my gallbladder because I was skeptical of the standard recommendations. I also happened to know a bit about it.
After my HIDA scan it turned out I was right.
However, it cost me as much in extra testing to keep it as to have it out. At least I can eat a steak with no problem these days.
I also wanted to say that people who actually are confident and know what they are doing usually do not mind explaining their decisions. They also do not mind new information and data short of some sort of emergency situation. I never go to any physician I perceive as cavalier or arrogant. Those are dangerous attitudes.
Nail gun futures?
Daffy Duck just said it's duck season, fire.
The EPA did EXACTLY the same thing in 1988 at the Vail headwaters of the Eagle River, which becomes the Colorado River below Eagle, Colorado, when it had Gulf and Western, owner of an abandoned mine at Gilman, CO pump 17 million gallons of tailings pond water back into the mine, which blew out from the pressure and dumped all of the wastes into the Eagle/Colorado River basin. The river looked like anti-freeze and Vail couldn't make snow that winter since it made the slopes orange. There was a spike in birth defects for several years. Fish only began breeding again within the past few years. There's still a large EPA funded treatment plant in operation to try to clean up the continuous flow from the mine today and the rocks in the Eagle are still black from the metals - zinc, cadmium, lead mostly, that flooded the river back then.
He should start a private EPA audit company and file for tax exempt status.
He likely prefers breathing.
Old school geologists and miners will tell you what they think, but they actually know what they are talking about. They have worked in the real world, not in government agency isolation cones of silence. I hope main stream media picks up on this part of the story.
If they do, it's only in order to promote the "We need more money and power!!!!!" angle.
The question is, what was their motive for deliberately killing off the river?
More money.
More power.
More fear-mongering.
Moar.
Agenda 21. That river eventually leads to Lake Powell, which provides drinking water to Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and San Diego. Along with the drought (geoengineered!), these fuckers want people in Cal to MOVE OUT.
Government logic:
If something goes wrong
Then throw more money at it.
....after making it go wrong.
This is a microcosm of everything that is wrong in government. Whether they be elected officials, or appointed bureaucrats, they believe, regardless of real world experience, that they know best. Then, when the inevitable happens, and things go south, they try to bury it, or blame it on unforseen circumstances. Hubris at its ugliest.
And whether intentional or not, they'll use it as an excuse for more $$ and/or more authority.
When it comes to spills and plugging them: The solutions always sound to me like a 6 year old thought them up.
"I'm not am academic type geologist. I'm a hands on geologist." #shotsfired
Seems like he's covering for them now. I've heard this from 911 shills. "Bush and Cheney were just incompetent, that's why 911 happened." lol
Never attribute to stupidity or incompetence that which is better explained by corruption and psychopathy.
Liberty is a demand. tyranny is submission..
From Mark Bentley, who I listen to every morning on KANW Albuquerque, who seems to be the only journalist who gives the explanation for what the hell was EPA doing with that half-assed "emergency Removal Action" at what EPA calls the "Red and Bonita Mine" where EPA spent CERCLA monies without a CERCLA process (where the NEPA process was a public meeting?), acting under CERCLA authorization for EPA to do "immediate" and "EMERGENCY" (and improvised!) cleanup actions like using shovels and pails to pick up dirt, or "blocking storm drains" in a city ... all the while they try to figure out what the problem is and what they ought to do about it for the long term--and of course all of that after they do a CERCLA RI/FS and publish an official NEPA/CERCLA ROD to explain whatever they decided to do. But, no, having a gold-plated red-carpet complete cleanup and the best possible "site restoration" under Superfund would hurt the community's image because of the perceived "stigma" so they naturally opted instead to forego an all-expenses-paid best-possible cleanup with community involvement every step of the way ... instead the LOCALS chose this half-assed unplanned earthen berm to be followed by a concrete cap AS CHOSEN BY LOCAL POLITICIANS with EPA paying a contractor to do their bidding ... and all without any of the formal engineering studies by all the expensive consultants and second opinions they could have asked for and gotten, given the nature of the site ... all of which they coulda had if they called a spade a spade and had it listed for Superfund cleanup. But will this hidden truth make it into the news? Doubtful. "Local Officials Feared Superfund Stigma: Rejected Billions for Old Mine Cleanups" Hah!
http://krtnradio.com/2015/08/03/dateline-new-mexico-august-2015/
"... As we said earlier, the Gold King mine has been leaching the metals into the river for years, and it has been killing fish as it gets into the upper reaches of the Animas. The EPA wanted to make it a superfund site, but local officials said no. The EPA then said okay, let the local officials lead cleanup efforts."
[and because nobody but me seems to understand relevant environmental law, I'll repeat the important info from Bentley and use bold]:
"The EPA wanted to make it a superfund site, but local officials said no. The EPA then said okay, let the local officials lead cleanup efforts."
"The EPA wanted to make it a superfund site, but local officials said no. The EPA then said okay, let the local officials lead cleanup efforts."
"The EPA wanted to make it a superfund site, but local officials said no. The EPA then said okay, let the local officials lead cleanup efforts."
They're already pawning this off on a to-be-named-at-a-later-date private contractor.
Not to mention that it is now highly suspected that the EPA unleashed this torrent from hell 100% intentionally as a ruse to demand more funding. Some for their own greasy pockets and some for the private contractor you refer to.
According to The Daily Caller it is Environmental Restoration (ER) LLC.
http://dailycaller.com/2015/08/12/epa-contractor-behind-co-mine-spill-got-381-million-from-taxpayer/
It was Adam Lanza.
Liberty is a demand. Tyranny is submission..
The only thing the DC US government is unhappy about is that there is no one to "fine," and/or send to Guantanamo for "the terroristic pollution of a river." But then I am sure the Festapo, the FBI, is working diligently to railroad some slave "informant" to finger someone--"Yes, yes! It was the retard over there. The one in the yellow slicker and Barney hat. I swear. It was him."
Taylor is right. The arrogance of government officials everywhere, including the EPA, is mind boggling.
Of course, bad outcomes simply play into the government's hands. An investigation will reveal (it always does) that the answer to preventing these in the future is a new and improved EPA with more power and, most importantly, more money.
"I am not an academic type geologist. I am a hands on geologist"
This was discussed on numerous threads yesterday, as usual the guy that has an understanding of theory and is a hands on doer gets it. The guys that bury their heads in theory and mass memorize but never directly apply theory in a hands on manner are commonly worthless. It's going to be the strictly academic geologists that push the official story here and actually buy into it regardless of how ludicris the story is.
The EPA's reasoning and actions taken in this scenario made no common sense from the get-go.
Government can never learn because it sees itself as the solution and once you allow it to see fit in one aspect of life, it will creep and creep until one realizes big government is the problem.
This is crazy! What is the EPA doing to stop the leak coming from a mine shaft full of toxic water? The leak is coming from a hole in the rock and all you need to do is plug up the shaft with concrete! It’s that simple! This is not a high pressure leak at the bottom of the ocean!
The EPA is sitting around and watching the water run out of the shaft instead of plugging the shaft with concrete! Even if the concrete had to be flown in by helicopter flights one at a time, by volume, the leak could be stopped within days!
The thousands of birds, insects, plants and animals that are being destroyed are worth more than a single EPA critter! Send them to prison!
And once the "hole" is plugged exactly where does the water go then?
Bob, you look like a know nothing from the EPA. You sure as hell not a miner. Ha. Ha. Ha. You couldn't plug a hole if you wanted too. Ha. Ha. Ha.
Uhhh No... The water will get out.. The water will keep backing up until it blows out somewhere else later in much more spectacular fashion. This is what the author wrote about in his first letter to the editor.
The point is it is usually better to leave these 100 yr old mines alone than to go in screwing with them - especially at 12000 ft in the mountains.
In reply to silvid and Bob: You critics that know nothing about mines and flooded shafts are full of shit but you think you know all about it, don’t you? The shafts, as you may suspect, are thousands of feet into the mountain and the shaft at the surface is the exposure to the surface.
Unattended shafts are generally flooded by ground water that is kept pumped out in active mines. The water can only rise to the top of the shaft and a deep penetrating concrete plug will seal the shaft. There is no pressure except for the weight of the water and it is unusual to see any leaks coming from anywhere other than the mine shaft. If there were any leaks they would be small and easily sealed with concrete.
Get it! Mountains and ore shoots are in solid rock, not dirt!
So, Windcatcher, do you work in mining? Your answer makes me think you do not.
In reply to EPA guy:
Where is your argument chicken-shit? You are the one that know nothing about mines or mining and has no argument to back up your assertion; all you have is Idiot style comments.
I thought so. You are weak. Your comment says it. Actually, I do know something about engineering. I have actually been in these mines with people who actually mined them when they were active, over these mountains and know the area reasonably well.
Go take your meds.
Dear EPA;
Shit flows downhill. That is all.
Your pal, Bob.
Dear Bob,
How is the weather down there at the bottom of the hill? Sunny and warm up here at the top.
Sincerely,
The EPA
"Ah, hell let's just do it, they can't fire us, we're government employees, civil servants, ya know...." And so it goes to shit at the speed of light...
It seems to me that one would want to pump some of that water out and check it before removing the 'dam' to the river. They KNEW it was mine-water, and likely contaminated, why not see how bad, and with WHAT, before letting it all go?
I don't know the particulars here, but is there any reason it couldn't have been pumped out and checked first? Maybe if it's really bad, you don't release it at all, just keep pumping it out and putting it wherever you put that kind of shit?
I don't know, maybe my idea is stupid. But the ideas of the 'experts' don't seem to be working out too well either.
And, while I'm here, here's another idea for all that hot nuclear waste and other ultra-hazardous materials...You build a no-frills, one-way rocket that has a lot of storage, and you fill it with the stuff. When it's full, you launch it right towards the sun. Just have to get it close enough for the sun's gravity to pull it right on in.
Then you start building the next rocket, and so on.
Sure, it costs a lot. But so does 24/7 security for all the many scattered deposits of this crap all over the world. Not to mention the potential costs when the security fails.
And this would be a one-time cost. Once you launch the stuff, it is gone forever, and needs no further attention. You get any nation that wants to launch some stuff to kick in for the rocket cost. Which should not be off-the-chart, because there are no astronauts, no equipment other than the basic, and you only need enough fuel to get it to within the sun's gravity.
It just seems so stupid to keep such stuff in containers, or plugged-up underground, whatever, for the lengths of time we're talking about here. Future contamination is all but assured. Why not just be done with it? And why stop there? Why not periodically send a 'plastic barge", or have a 'disposable diapers launch'? But even just getting rid of all the nuclear waste and having a means in place to deal with it as it is generated would be a major achievement.
Elon Musk and his like-minded friends should work on that instead of manned Mars flights...Hey Elon, you could become known as the man who cleaned up the planet! That would be pretty cool, huh? Dontcha want to do something like that? Mars is fun if you can pull it off, which is doubtful, but this is definitely do-able TODAY and would assure your place among the People Who Have Done Important Shit For Mankind...
In reply to bemused observer:
You can’t pump out a flooded mine that is thousands of feet deep. The shafts would fill back up with ground water after they were pumped out! You have no idea what you are talking about.
There is no access down into the mine, it is flooded and the timbers are rotten. The best that can be done is chase the water back with a heavy slurry and then seal the shaft deep into the rock mountain with concrete and rebar.
You can pump them out. They were all pumped out at one time. They are not necessarily dependent on timber and depending on the mine they may not be rotten. Some of these places were recentaly active depending on the mine.
All these engineering problems can be solved with time and money. However, the key point is that unless someone wants to reactivate the mine there is no point in pumping it out or doing all the other work that would have to be done.
You are just reading some other piece of information and misapplying it.
The actual correct solution may actually be to not seal the mine and the original flow out of the mine may be low enough to sufficiently dilute it with the natural water flow of the area. In fact, this was what was happening before the EPA fixed it.
All of these mines sit at extremely high altitudes and the snowpacks can be quite deep in many of the years.
A one-way rocket filled with the earth's politicians and lawyers would go a long way in cleaning up the planet....
Bemused, they could filter out the particulates and ship it to Cali as govt relief to show the .gov cares about it's people. Like the blankets they used to give the Indians back in the 1800s. Or, just dump it in the Pacific. Working for Fukushima just fine so far. This disaster problem solving is so easy. I ought to be a consultant making big money.
You know, I think it would be best for all of us if, to protect the environment from totally unforseeable catastrophes of this nature, the government outlawed the ownership of gold by private citizens, preferably worldwide. Gaia must come first.
Y'all might want to read this:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/colorado-mine-owner-contaminated-wastewater/
And absolutely no one questions the ability of owners to abandon mines, privatizing the profit and socializing the cost. Next best thing to sports stadiums.
Hope this guy likes nail guns
The individual is unreliable and therefore not to be trusted with his self-determination. However, if we consolidate these defectives in large groups and assign them unaccountable authority to rule over the former, a strange transmogrification takes place: the latter become omniscient, beneficient, even filled with wisdom. As (excepting proggies of course) the rest can see here in the case of this spill. Reductio ad Absurdem would indicate that proggies' infatuation with the state and its magical abilities are a bit "overconsidered". But from what I'm hearing in some reports now is that the worst is over, nothing to see here, move along. The rug sweeping has commenced, on to the next f**kup.
Yup, there it goes across the news banner below my local weather forecast: the State of CO now assures the people downstream of the spill that the river can be used. I'm curious about the number of years mining that this wastewater spill represents. If the ecology can naturally recover in just a few days, perhaps EPA has hit on a new cleanup procedure: dilution is the solution to pollution. Just open these old mines and let 'em rip.
The EPA plugged the Gold King last fall about eight months ago. Actually just piled dirt over the leaky timber bulkehad. The mine itself is half-a-century or more old, but wasn't draining to any great degree until recently. All the drainage that spilled accumulated in it in the last eight months. Before then, it was just leaking out and down into Cement Creek.
It wasn't even draining that much until the EPA also put temporary plugs in two lower mines: the Red and Bonita mines. Those mines were leaking several hundred gallons a minute. The EPA put temporary plugs in last fall and was preparing to pump cement into them for a permanent bulkhead. Except those mines filled up with groundwater and caused a lot more to flow into the Gold Kind mine above it, making the drainage in Gold King back up much faster than they expected.
The Red and Bonita Mine drainage wasn't that great until they plugged up the American Tunnel Mine below those two. American Tunnel filled and flowed up into the Red and Bonita Mines, causing that problem (which then backed up into Gold King, causing that problem).
The mines are all connected hydraulically through old tunnels or fissures. They're all in the side of a mountain - there isn't any level water table. The groundwater infiltrates into the mountain/rocks way above all these mines and flows down inside the slopes. In that sense, they're ALL above the water table and will have some infiltration. THAT isn't the problem.
The problem is that they keep plugging the lowest mines to stop the drainage from them, then the water backs up into the mines above them. Hydrologists could have told them exactly how stupid their plug and pray strategy was in THAT particular mountian in THOSE particular mines. The EPA geologists SHOULD have figured out what was going on by this point anyway. They seem oblivious to the way this really works inside the mountain.
There are ways to mitigage the problem, like filling the ENTIRE old mine with hydraulic cement. That costs a fortune because you have to pump out most of the contaminated water first and use a ton of cement. The cheap way (which isn't working here) is to pour a thick bulkhead somewhere near the enterance and just let the rest of the mine fill with water behind it. Which works great, unless there's 'holes' in the mine (either man-made or natural rock fissures) where the water is going to leak out somewhere else after the mine fills.
That's exactly what's happening here - it keeps leaking through somehow to nearby mines at higher elevations. Then the EPA moves to the next mine and figures out how to plug that one. I have no idea if Gold King is the highest one or the last one in the chain, but I doubt it. They'll bulkhead all these mines and have the same problem in some adjacent or higher mine in a few years. The 'solution' they're crying about that the locals don't want is to build a treatment plant for the drainage - I guess at the Gold King mine.
These mines are in the side of a mountain slope though - they will drain pretty much forever, so you can never shut the plant down. Where's the money for their remediation contractors if you can't suck a million a year off taxpayers FOREVER to run a pointless treatment plant.
They need to drain all those damn mines and FILL THEM COMPLETELY to seal them so there IS NO MORE DRAINAGE - EVER. But why spend $5 million once to fix the problem permanently when your cronies at your brother-in-law's remediation contracting outfit can milk taxpayers for a million a year in perpetuity? Superfund is like an endless trough for remediation contractors. They are NEVER going to get their EPA pals to stop the flow of slop by actually fixing anything. Considering how much money is at stake, you can imagine what kind of bribes are flowing to the EPA people handling the Superfund treasure-chest. How much do you think some low-level EPA program director making $140K a year can be bought for if a remediation outfit can make a million a year FOREVER??
I would love to see a real IRS audit of anybody above line manager at the EPA. I want to know how the bureaucrats there can afford three homes and luxury automobiles. They sure as hell ain't doing it on their government salary. Not to mention a close look at nepotism and conflicts-of-interest between the EPA directors and the contractors they hire. Environmental Resources is only the tip of the iceberg. Citizens would burn the EPA to the ground if they knew a fraction of the corruption and tax dollar theft that goes on in that place as a matter of everyday business.
The biggest toxic waste dump in North America is right in the directors offices in EPA headquarters. That place needs a God damn psychopath enema.
Thanks for the thorough explanation of the facts on the ground. Now I think more fed regs and their enforcers will solve these problems, don't you? I remember when the Reagan administration updated the NPDES regs, what a fiasco that continues to this day. The only solution to these types of problems, sad to say, is astute stewardship at the local level. Politically inspired, one size fits all discharge regulations decreed by the federales are neither scientifically valid nor practical. Should be a domain of what was once called 'states rights' imo.
What was the EPA doing doinking around with a tiny little pissant 100 gallon per minute water leak?
Don't they have global warming to screw up?
"Oooops! We meant to cool the planet by 3 degrees by raising taxes. But we raised taxes too much and the planet cooled by 73 degrees!
My bad!"
"Don't worry, though. Obama will be flying over your village in Air Force One to see you're shivering ass. Then FEMA will airdrop some long underwear to you. VOTE DEMOCRAT!"