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Federal environmental officials have confirmed the mustard-colored muck that surged into a river from a Colorado mine contained heavy metals including lead and arsenic, but they didn't immediately discuss amounts or health risks.
Are the responsible individuals being prosecuted? Have they, individually, paid fines for the violation? Have the greenie nutjobs called for their deaths yet, like they do when a company makes a mistake? Where is the NYT and Puffpoo?
If experience tells me anything short term there will be some damage especially for the fish, long term it should be fine.
Appears this mine was originally started late 1800's, mines like this dot the entire US landscape. They were built long before any environmental regulations were put in place and typically have drainage tunnels that empty into nearby waterways. It's likely that holding pond was recently built in the last few decades. Most are abandoned decades or even longer than 100 years and there is no one to hold responsible.
Cleanup of these properties is being done with fees collected from the coal mining industry. For every ton of coal that is mined the mining company pays a fee, that fee is used to reclaim these properties and remediate issues like this. It's used for all types of abandoned mines and properties, not just coal mines.
“Once the plume passes through town, it doesn’t mean the event is over,” said Dan Olson, executive director of San Juan Citizens Alliance, an environmental group based in Durango. “There is sediment settling out of this event all along the river, and that sediment is likely laden with heavy metals and will be kicked back up every time there’s a storm surge.
The Animas empties into Lake Powell. The negative effects of this terrible accident will be felt far and wide.
If you go out into your backyard you are going to find heavy metals in the soil, RUN!
Without any quantification of the levels people are just making assumptions and certainly the word of an envirovenalists is the last pace you want to get qualified information from.
I don't know the exact situation here but if I were to guess as I previously mentioned this holding pond wax probably built within the last few decades, previous to that the run off would have been going directly into the waterway. In my area what they will do is build a series of them. These are adaptable to aquatic plants, it's essentially an artificial wetland. This allows the sediment to settle and the plants help filter it.
EPA.....Top down incompetence and lack of actual field experience for EPA personnel responsible for causing the problem!
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