It looks like this story of the EPA breaching an old gold mine and bespoiling the drinking and irrigation waters of the Animus river – deliberately and after the owner of this defunct mine warned them this might happened – has “legs”. The EPA’s response was to “ton of bricks” him by threatening him with $35,000 per day fines. In other words, if you don’t do what we tell you, we will bankrupt you. Guess that’s the Obama way.
Anyways, a collection of more links:
EPA FAILS TO ACKNOWLEDGE IT COERCED MINE OWNER TO GRANT ACCESS
The Environmental Protection Agency isn’t responding to claims by Todd Hennis, owner of the Gold King mine in Colorado that the agency coerced him to grant access to his property. Once taking over, of course, EPA’s incompetent attempts to remove debris created a massive 3 million gallon toxic waste spill from the mine. Hennis told the CBS Denver affiliate that unless he allowed the EPA to have access and authority to conduct operations on the site the agency had threatened him with daily fines of $35,000…Breitbart News asked the EPA on Friday to confirm or deny Hennis’s claim, but has received no reply.
Mine owner: EPA record of toxic dumping dates back to 2005
The EPA has a record of releasing toxic runoff from mines in two tiny Colorado towns that dates to 2005, a local mine owner claims. The 3-million-gallon heavy-metal spill two weeks ago in Silverton polluted three states and touched off national outrage. But the EPA escaped public wrath in 2005 when it secretly dumped up to 15,000 tons of poisonous waste into another mine 124 miles away. That dump — containing arsenic, lead and other materials — materialized in runoff in the town of Leadville, said Todd Hennis, who owns both mines along with numerous others.
“If a private company had done this, they would’ve been fined out of existence,” Hennis said. “I have been battling the EPA for 10 years and they have done nothing but create pollution. About 20 percent (of Silverton residents) think it’s on purpose so they can declare the whole area a Superfund site.”
EPA HIDING DATA FROM TOXIC SPILL IT CAUSED IN COLORADO
The Environmental Protection Agency insists it needed to take over a gold mine in Colorado. But — now that it’s caused a massive pollution spill — the agency refuses to furnish proof that it ever needed control of the mine.
Not only did the EPA coerce the mine owner to grant it access on threat of a $35,000 per day fine and then fail to take common sense precautions to check the water pressure behind the Gold King mine when it began removing debris from the portal, now the agency is hiding the data related to the before and after effects of the spill.
Cost of EPA’s toxic spill could soar to nearly $30 billion
The cost of cleaning up a major toxic waste spill in the West caused by an Environmental Protection Agency contractor could soar as high as $27.7 billion. That’s the conclusion of study released Tuesday morning by the right-leaning American Action Forum. The group is one of the first to attempt to estimate the clean-up cost of what will likely be remembered as one of the biggest environmental disasters of 2015.
Dirty Harry Knows: The EPA’s Got to Know Its Limitations
Clint Eastwood’s iconic Dirty Harry Callahan uttered one of the greatest movie lines of all time: “A man’s got to know his limitations.” It would appear no one in Washington, D.C. has ever heard of Harry or his weighty wisdom. No one in our nation’s capitol seems to think they are limited in any way. Not by any personal shortcomings – it’s like everyone who enters the city limits thinks they magically transmogrify from Clark Kent into Superman. And they certainly find no limits placed upon them by anything as quaint and antiquated as the Constitution.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is a classic example of very limited men and women behaving boundlessly. To begin, it can be easily argued that the Agency shouldn’t even exist. The federal government’s powers must by the Constitution be expressly enumerated – and nowhere therein does it get anywhere near enumerating what is being done by the EPA.
EPA has scrubbed all 191 photos off their photo log / list view pageshttp://www.epaosc.org/site/image_listview.aspx?site_id=11082 . If the #1 item at this page is an accurate indicator, the scrub took place on Sunday.
I had visited that site last week when the event first happened and I wrote my first report, and I can confirm that the photos below, plus many more, are now gone.
THE GOLD KING MINE FIASCO: WHAT IT TELLS US ABOUT THE EPA
At Watts Up With That?, Paul Driessen has an excellent update on the Gold King mine disaster. This is what happened:
On August 5, an Environmental Restoration company crew, supervised by US Environmental Protection Agency officials, used an excavator to dig away tons of rock and debris that were blocking the entrance portal of Colorado’s Gold King Mine, which had been largely abandoned since 1923. Water had been seeping into the mine and out of its portal for decades, and the officials knew (or could and should have known) the water was acidic (pH 4.0-4.5), backed up far into the mine, and laced with heavy metals.
But they kept digging – until the greatly weakened dam burst open, unleashing a 3-million-gallon (or more) toxic flood that soon contaminated the Animas and San Juan Rivers, all the way to Lake Powell in Utah. To compound the disaster, EPA then waited an entire day before notifying downstream mayors, health officials, families, farmers, ranchers, fishermen and kayakers that the water they were drinking, using for crops and livestock, or paddling in was contaminated by lead, cadmium, mercury and arsenic.
If a private company had been responsible, the EPA would have come down like a hammer. But not this time:
Anyone who follows mining, oil spill and power plant accidents knows the EPA, Obama White House and Big Green environmentalist rhetoric: There is no safe threshold for chemicals. They are toxic and carcinogenic at parts per billion. The water will be unsafe for years or even decades. Wildlife will die. Corporate polluters are criminals and must pay huge fines. We will keep our boots on their necks.
This time the White House was silent, and Democrats and eco-activists rushed to defend EPA and shift the blame to mining and mining companies. EPA officials made statements they would never use if a private company had caused the blowout: EPA had simply “miscalculated” how much water had backed up. It was just trying to stick a pipe into the top of the mine to safely pump liquid out for treatment. We were “very careful.” Contaminants “are flowing too fast to be an immediate health threat.” The river is already “restoring itself” back to pre-spill levels, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy insisted.
Not the first time the Obama Administration did a double standard. But once again, we see the primacy of the Progressive “intent” over, you know, actual results of their actions.
Actually, they did it five months ago. But it has gotten hardly any publicity. Maybe in the wake of the EPA’s Gold King Mine disaster, people will pay attention to what the agency did in Greensboro, Georgia:
In Greensboro, EPA-funded contractors grading a toxic 19th-century cotton mill site struck a water main, sending the deadly sediment into a nearby creek. …The sediment flows carry dangerous mercury, lead, arsenic and chromium downstream to the Oconee River — home to many federally and state protected species — and toward the tourist destination of Lake Oconee.
Lead in the soil is 20,000 times higher than federal levels established for drinking water, said microbiologist Dave Lewis, who was a top-level scientist during 31 years at the Environmental Protection Agency. …
The mill site contains 34 hazardous chemicals, 30 of which are on the EPA’s list of priority pollutants because of “high toxicity, persistence, lack of degradability, and harmful effects on living organisms,” Lewis wrote.
Navajo Nation Says Relief Water Sent From EPA After Toxic Spill Was Tainted — See the Videos
With its farmers advised to avoid using water from the San Juan River for weeks after a toxic spill of wastewater from an inactive mine contaminated it and the Animas River, federal officials arranged to send relief water to members of the Navajo Nation.
However, some members say that the water delivered to them was tainted. Shiprock farm board member Joe Ben Jr. complained that water coming from tanks delivered by a contractor employed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency contained oil and didn’t smell right.
