Colorado mine wastewater spill caused by EPA was preventable: report

[October 23, 2015]  By Keith Coffman
 
 DENVER (Reuters) - The release of 3 million gallons (11 million liters) of toxic wastewater from a defunct southwestern Colorado gold mine that was triggered by the Environmental Protection Agency was preventable, a government review of the spill concluded on Thursday.

A 132-page report conducted by engineers with the U.S Bureau of Reclamation said the Aug. 5 blowout from the Gold King Mine above Silverton, Colorado, was due to a combination of factors “spanning several decades.”

Nearby mining operations and tunneling beneath the century-old stake led to changing groundwater conditions that the EPA failed to anticipate when it reopened a portal on the site in recent years, the report said.

An excavating crew under contract with the EPA to slow seepage from the site inadvertently breached a tunnel wall, unleashing a torrent of wastewater that had backed up behind the mountainside.

The water, carrying heavy metals, poured into Cement Creek, and then downstream into the Animas and San Juan rivers, turning the waterways a bright orange. The plume ultimately emptied into Lake Powell in Utah nine days after the spill.

The governors of Colorado, New Mexico and Utah, the three states affected by the spill, all declared a state of emergency in its aftermath.

EPA chief Gina McCarthy said her agency was taking full responsibility for the spill, and has said the water quality of stream fouled by the release have returned to pre-spill levels.

The Bureau of Reclamation engineers said in their report that there are no uniform protocols among the government agencies charged with cleaning up the estimated 100,000 abandoned mines that dot the western United States.

“The incident at Gold King Mine is somewhat emblematic of the current state of practice in abandoned mine remediation,” they said.

The report recommended that for future mine remediation projects, agencies should include a “failure modes analysis,” a review of the history of each site, and precise water measurements.
 
 “Where significant consequences of failure are possible, independent expertise should be obtained to review project plans and designs prior to implementation,” the report said.
 
 U.S. Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado said in a statement that he was “deeply troubled” that the EPA was not only responsible for the spill but that it was preventable.
 
 “I look forward to a response to my questions surrounding the EPA’s insufficient and untimely recovery efforts and its proactive measures to prevent a disaster of similar magnitude in the future," Gardner said.
 
(Reporting by Keith Coffman; Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Lisa Shumaker)

[© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved.]

Copyright 2015 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.