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EPA says that about 3 million gallons of toxic wastewater, triple previous estimates, have poured from an old Colorado gold mine into local streams since last week.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Sunday the spill caused accidentally by one of its clean-up teams working at an old Colorado gold mine has tripled in volume.
The leak, containing high concentrations of heavy metals such as arsenic, mercury and lead, is now estimated to have reached about three million gallons of toxic wastewater, triple than originally estimated.
According to the first statement released by the EPA, the contaminated water was hiding out behind debris near the Gold King Mine entrance, where the crew was working with heavy machinery. The mine waste poured out into a nearby creek, eventually leading to the Animas River where the spill spread.
These images, courtesy of the Environmental Protection Agency, show the mouth of the Gold King Mine tunnel (left), and the channeled runoff on the mine dump (right).
The discharge was still flowing at the rate of 500 gallons per minute yesterday, four days after the spill began at the Gold King Mine, the EPA added.
Thaddeus Lightfoot, partner at the international law firm Dorsey & Whitney, who has nearly three decades of practicing environmental law, told MINING.com the incident poses a real liability problem for EPA and its contractor.
“Where EPA contractors have made such mistakes in the past, courts have held them viable for any additional remediation required by such actions despite statutory immunity provisions,” Lightfoot said.
Image courtesy of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The agency has been diverting the ongoing release into two newly built settling ponds where the waste was being treated with chemicals to lower its acidity and to filter out dissolved solids before being discharged to Cement Creek.
Image courtesy of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The federal unit has also set up a website to provide constant updates on the situation.
EPA reiterated the spill does not threaten local sources of drinking water and the main contaminants responsible for the leak’s mustard-like colour are unlikely to be dangerous.
Image courtesy of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Still, recreational activity on the affected waterways has been suspended until the orange-coloured plume has fully dissipated.
Image by @kelly.greenwell | Instagram.
5 Comments
YellowstoneRocks
This situation was an accident waiting to happen at any moment but several methods could have been used that may have likely prevented this uncontrolled release had they been employed before a trackhoe was utilized to dig into the Gold King mine.
Geophysical Characterization of the seeps, Horizontal drilling into the portal with piezo, borescopy and other charecterization methods. Vertical drilling and pumping dewatering options. And many others that other experts here can easily think of.
A proper full engineering risk analysis and what if scenario exploration could have easily shown that the minimal cost to fully characterize what was truly beyond that plug in the Gold King was worth avoiding the worst case scenario that has now played out.
Those discussions about the importance of such risk exploration may not have been conducted properly because of the funding starvation problem stated above blinding the team, or they may have occurred and may have been dismissed, formal proceedings of those meetings are likely running their way through paper shredders at this moment as the tables have turned and the EPA normally a regulatory agency is now in full liability minimizing and denial mode.
Rod B
When I lived in Colorado back in the 1990s, I was in the Colorado Springs library doing some research on the tailings piles in downtown Colorado Springs. While looking for a book on the racks I came across a thin, 24 or 25 page document in a cardboard cover entitled something like “A Study of the Invertebrate Fauna of Alamosa River”. The document was joint study by the Colorado Dept of Fish and Game and EPA. As I recall, the document was printed around 1952, some 40 years before the Summitville “disaster”.
The concluding page of the document stated that there were no vertebrate fauna in the Alamosa River from Alum Creek to the Alamosa Reservoir. Yet the EPA was quick to charge Robert Friedland and Galactic Minerals with the murder of 10,000 trout due to the overflow and seepage from the liner of the process pond at Summitville.
Since that time I have little respect for the EPA and its minions.
Geosarge13
How well I remember that tunnel – one of the first active mines my father took me to see. When the Gold King was being actively mined in the late 1980’s there wasn’t a problem with discharge into Cement Creek. Ironically, in addition to the declining price of gold, it was the increase in EPA restrictions that shut the mine down at the time.
Zulugroove
Nothing new here,…no one will take the fall.., they will point the finger at all sorts of people,departments until our collective memory and focus wanes, then moves on to what the latest celebrity is doing eating or wearing then …..SHAZAM…!! The issue is over, just that easy.
We have become pathetic Shepards of our planet …nothing new there either!
Zulugroove
Besides the colour goes nicely with my cashmere sweater