• Officials pledge to 'make the EPA pay' for Animas River spill

    From El Jones@21:1/5 to All on Mon Aug 10 23:20:45 2015
    XPost: alt.politics.obama, sac.politics, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh
    XPost: alt.native

    Government officials from New Mexico and the Navajo Nation were
    among those working through the weekend to try to understand and
    respond to the Environmental Protection Agency’s inadvertent
    triggering of the spill of an estimated 3 million gallons of
    toxic waste into the Animas River last week.

    Wired has a succinct summary of how we got here:

    It’s a classic case of good intentions backfiring. The abandoned
    mines in the area have long been a problem, filling up with
    acidic wastewater that leaches heavy metals out of rock and
    leaks into the river—a slow-motion environmental debacle. And
    the EPA has been trying to designate the mines a Superfund site
    for years, only to come up against local resistance. The mines
    still aren’t on the Superfund list, but the EPA has been trying
    to them clean up anyway. That’s why a crew was digging around
    the Gold King Mine — they starting to investigate leaks when the
    mine’s plug blew, turning the slow-motion problem into a fast-
    moving, highly visible advertisement for fixing the problem.
    “It’s hard being on the other side of this,” said Dave
    Ostrander, the regional EPA director of emergency preparedness,
    at a public meeting on Friday afternoon. “We typically respond
    to emergencies; we don’t cause them.”

    The spill occurred along the Animas River in Southwestern
    Colorado, which flows through Northwestern New Mexico near Aztec
    and into the San Juan River. The water then flows through the
    Navajo Nation as part of the Colorado River system that provides
    water to much of Arizona and Southern California.

    Officials in New Mexico and the Navajo Nation have urged people
    to stay away from the rivers while the contamination flows
    through. Both governments are conducting their own tests to
    determine the severity of the disaster.

    N.M. Gov. Susana Martinez said the EPA failed to notify the
    state about the spill for 24 hours. State officials are highly
    critical of the federal agency.

    “We will not allow EPA to leave until they have compensated us,”
    N.M. Environment Department Cabinet Secretary Ryan Flynn said
    during a town hall meeting, according to the Farmington Daily
    Times.

    New Mexico’s congressman representing that area, Democrat Ben
    Ray Luján, also criticized the EPA’s response during a weekend
    meeting, according to the newspaper.

    “There’s a lot of questions that our constituents have, and so
    many communities have as well, that we need to get rapid
    responses to,” the Daily Times quoted him as saying.

    Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye announced Sunday that the
    Navajo Nation was making cleanup plans and preparing lawsuits
    against the Gold King Mine, where the spill occurred, and the
    EPA.

    “We are going to be suing for millions, billions of dollars,”
    the Navajo Times quoted Begaye as saying. “…We are going to make
    EPA pay for this.”

    ‘Thank you EPA’

    Though many said the mine shares blame for the pollution, much
    of the anger in a discussion NMPolitics.net facilitated on
    Facebook was aimed at the EPA.

    “Thank you EPA,” former state Rep. Kathy McCoy of Albuquerque
    wrote. “If a private company had done this, they’d be jailed and
    fined within minutes.”

    “This is your crack government professionals at work,” wrote
    Mike Johnson of Santa Fe.

    Not all were quick to express anger. “The EPA now must be
    completely open and hide nothing,” Michael Swickard of Las
    Cruces wrote. “I’m not mad that an accident did happen, but if
    the EPA gives us attitude or they BS us, I will be angry.”

    Many joined the Martinez Administration in expressing
    frustration about the EPA’s lack of information gathering and/or
    sharing about the spill.

    Claudia Anderson of Farmington said the San Juan River runs
    along her property. She wrote on Facebook that her “biggest beef
    is the lack of timely information.” She was worried about
    wildlife.

    “We keep part of the property wild as sanctuary, and I’ve got
    turkeys and deer and raccoons and heaven only knows what else
    who drink out of that river,” Anderson wrote.

    Officials were scrambling, without solid information, to keep
    people and animals safe. Among Begaye’s words to people on the
    Navajo Nation, according to the Navajo Times: Stay out of the
    San Juan River. Keep livestock from drinking the water. Avoid
    using the river water.

    The Durango Herald on Sunday published an article about “cause
    for optimism:” Days after the spill, there haven’t been massive
    fish or insect die-offs.

    Effects ‘will be felt for months’

    Later Sunday the EPA upped its estimate of the spill’s size from
    1 million gallons to 3 million. And one thing is certain, the
    Durango Herald reported in a separate article:

    The effects of the environmental disaster will be felt for
    months. The high-water mark left from the pulse of toxic waste
    deposited a yellow-orange film along large swaths of the Animas
    River. As the murky water traveled 50 miles from Silverton, it
    tumbled over rocks that kept it stirred. By the time it arrived
    in the Animas Valley near Dalton Ranch, the river slowed, which
    gave minerals a chance to settle on the riverbed. High-water run-
    off events are expected to stir those sediments and cloud the
    river during the weeks and months to come.

    And from Wired:

    The EPA is working to stop the flow into the river by building a
    retention pond next to the mine. But the contaminants already in
    the water? There’s nothing to do — except wait for the muck to
    sink or dilute down. The Bureau of Reclamation is releasing more
    water from the Navajo Dam to dilute the toxic metals. But spring
    runoff next year might stir up contaminants that have sunk to
    the river bottom all over again.

    Carol Miller of Ojo Sarco wrote on Facebook that the spill is a
    symptom of a larger problem.

    “The real cause of this was the company or companies that mined
    and profited from the ore and walked away from the mess, not
    even attempting remediation,” she wrote. “The heavy metals sink
    to the bottom and the river and stream banks even as the
    contamination is diluted. Every time there are rains, snowmelt
    and/or high water the toxins will be re-suspended. This is a
    long-term disaster that isn’t over when the river again runs
    clear.”

    Video

    Here’s video from the Durango Herald of the contamination
    flowing into the river:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faTNIWP3qaE

    http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/2015/08/officials-pledge-to-make- the-epa-pay-for-animas-river-spill/

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