Free Republic

Gina McCarthy and Deb Haaland are on Biden’s climate team. This should be interesting given both of their ties to the disastrous Gold King Mine spill of 2015. That year, a mine up near Silverton, Colorado was under clean-up protocols by the EPA. The same EPA that Gina McCarthy was running at the time. Then, the spill happened. The Animas River turned into yellow sludge from southwestern Colorado all the way into and nearly through New Mexico. Who lives in New Mexico and just the year before lost her bid to be NM Lieutenant Governor? Joe Biden’s new choice for...

EPA just started hauling waste from treatment plant to new storage site. A truck hauling sludge from the Environmental Protection Agency’s water-treatment plant for the Gold King Mine went off the road Monday and crashed into Cement Creek. ... The EPA just started on June 15 hauling sludge from the water treatment plant, about 10 miles north of Silverton in an area known as Gladstone, to a historic mine waste pile, called the Kittimac, along County Road 2. The trip is 10 to 15 miles one way, but involves windy, mountainous dirt roads. Three months after the EPA triggered the...

Critics fear move will impact upper Animas River aquatic life. Could the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to haul waste from the Gold King Mine to the banks of the upper Animas River put undue stress on a fishery already struggling to survive? ... Three months after the EPA triggered the Gold King Mine blowout in August 2015, the agency built a temporary water-treatment plant, in an area known as Gladstone, 10 miles north of Silverton within the Cement Creek watershed. But for the past year, the EPA has said room is running out at Gladstone to store the waste byproduct...

Shortly after the EPA triggered the release, to obscure and limit its own liability, the EPA created the Bonita Peak Mining District—around the Gold King Mine—and made the Superfund designation. Past EPA studies found the area did not merit inclusion on the National Priorities List. ... EPA’s Attempt to Bury its Colorado Gold Mine Disaster is Illegal. ... Mountain States Legal Foundation for its clients ... advised the three-judge panel that the Obama administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), pursuant to the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA or Superfund statute), designated what it erroneously called the Bonita Peak...

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials improperly withheld information from The Daily Caller News Foundation confirming its reporting that the contractor responsible for the August 2015 Gold King Mine spill was awarded nearly $2.7 million not long after the disaster. The EPA internally acknowledged the award and crafted a response to TheDCNF’s finding, according to emails obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, but the response was never sent to the news organization. (RELATED: Feds Obstruct Media Probe By Blocking Interviews With Key Officials) “It just slipped through the cracks,” EPA spokeswoman Melissa Harrison told TheDCNF 32 minutes after deadline. “It...

A decades-long battle between federal environmental officials and a small Colorado town is about to end in the government’s favor, thanks to the agency-caused Gold King Mine spill disaster ... Residents surrendered to federal demands only after an EPA work-crew turned the nearby Animas River bright yellow for nearly a week by releasing a three-million-gallon flood of acidic mine waste under extremely questionable circumstances in August 2015. Suspended in the flood was 880,000 pounds of toxic metals, including lead and arsenic, that poured into the river that supplies drinking water for people living in three states and the Navajo Nation....

New exhibition shows how tribe dealt with blowout last August. Navajo artist Venaya Yazzie wrote the Diné expression – Tó éí ííná – beside a photograph of a friend sullenly looking out on the tainted San Juan River in the days after the Gold King Mine spill. It means “Water is Life,” and for the indigenous tribes affected by the mine blowout in August, the words sum up months of confusion, fear and sadness surrounding the health of critical southwest waterways. On Aug. 5, the Environmental Protection Agency breached the portal of the mine north of Silverton, sending an estimated...

The head of the New Mexico Environment Department blasted the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday during a legislative committee meeting in the New Mexico Legislature, saying federal officials are downplaying the long-term effects of the Gold King Mine spill. ... Environment Secretary Ryan Flynn told members of the House agriculture committee that the agency has been pressuring communities to get behind a proposal that calls for monitoring water quality for only a year. Flynn also argued that the proposal would look at whether the water is safe for recreation rather than digging deeper into recurring spikes in the readings...

New Mexico plans to sue the federal government and the owners of two Colorado mines that were the source of a massive spill last year that contaminated rivers in Utah and other Western states, officials said Thursday. The New Mexico Environment Department said it filed a notice of its intention to sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over the spill. The lawsuit would be a first and also would target the state of Colorado and the owners of the Gold King and Sunnyside mines. Utah leaders have also reserved the possibility of legal action against the EPA. In a statement...

Todd Hennis claims EPA planned mine spill to usher in Superfund. the Environmental Protection Agency-contracted crew's triggered blowout on his property, effectively turning the Animas River into an orange spectacle. He was speechless and horrified, but not surprised ... I have been trying to make everybody aware of the dangers posed by the Sunnyside Mine pool for 14 years .. when I saw the pictures, I just felt my life was over. I just thought, Oh God, what did they do? ... Hennis, for his part, has long maintained increased flows from the Gold King Mine are a result of...

More than 30 individuals, businesses seek damages from EPA. Financial damage claims for those affected by the Aug. 5 Gold King Mine blowout eclipsed $1.3 million just two months after the Environmental Protection Agency triggered the release of 3 million gallons of mine wastewater down the Animas River. ... more than 30 individuals and business owners filed Form 95, the claim process for financial reimbursements from economic loss caused by wrongful U.S. government actions. The combined claims total about $1.3 million in damages ... the hardest hit are rafting companies and their employees, who were forced to shut down for...

Environmental Protection Agency officials require contractors to sign secrecy pledges that in the case of the Gold King Mine spill kept the public in the dark earlier this year about a Colorado mining disaster that turned waters yellow as they flowed through two states and the Navajo Nation. ... these secrecy clauses are typical with the EPA - the same government agency whose former administrator, Lisa Jackson, used an alias email address to avoid public scrutiny. ... the EPA controls the flow of information by circumventing federal regulations that dictate when an agency can use non-disclosure clauses by including secrecy...

“It is disappointing, but not surprising, that the EPA failed to meet the House Science Committee’s reasonable deadline in turning over documents pertaining to the Gold King Mine spill,” said Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX). “These documents are essential to the Committee’s ongoing investigation and our upcoming hearing on Sept. 9. But more importantly, this information matters to the many Americans directly affected in western states, who are still waiting for answers from the EPA.” ... For several days, the EPA didn’t notify the states of Utah, New Mexico or the Navajo Nation that the spill was coming their way. McCarthy...