The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a US government organization that prosecutes people for crimes against the environment, released over three million gallons of toxic mining waste into Cement Creek on August 5 contaminating the Animas River, San Juan River, and the Colorado River in Utah.
Apparently, the EPA crew ‘accidentally’ caused a leak at the dormant Gold King Mine near Durango, Colorado, polluting the river with extremely high levels of arsenic, cadmium, copper, beryllium, iron, lead, mercury, and zinc. The recorded lead levels alone were 12,000 times higher than normal.
A lion dies in Africa….total liberal meltdown. Massive EPA toxic spill turning the Animas River the color of fresh baby poop, silence. Hm.
— Leah the Boss (@LeahRBoss) August 16, 2015
But now it seems the act of poisoning the river was intentional, and not accidental. The EPA did it to secure federal Superfund money – Classifying the spill as a disaster enables the release of aid and recovery funds. A letter from a retired geologist has emerged that warned of the risk a week beforehand. “Based on my 47 years of experience as a professional geologist, it appears to me that the EPA is setting your town and the area up for a possible Superfund blitzkrieg. “But make no mistake, within seven days, all of the 500gpm flow will return to Cement Creek. Contamination may actually increase due to disturbance and flushing action within the workings. The “grand experiment” in my opinion will fail. And guess what [EPA’s] Mr. Hestmark will say then? Gee, “Plan A” didn’t work so I guess we will have to build a treatment plant at a cost to taxpayers of $100 million to $500 million (who knows). “Reading between the lines, I believe that has been EPA’s plan all along. The proposed Red & Bonita plugging plan has been their way of getting a foot in the door to justify their hidden agenda for construction of a treatment plant. After all, with a budget of $8.2 billion and 17,000 employees, the EPA needs new, big projects to feed the best and justify their existence,” Dave Taylor of Farmington wrote in a letter to the editors of The Silverton Standard, published July 30. 
The massive spill also highlights the market for environmental cleanup firms, a lucrative government contracting business. The contractor hired to plug the Red and Bonita mines as Environmental Restoration, LLC of Fenton, Missouri, has been awarded $381 million in federal contracts from October 2007 through August 2015. More than $364 million of that amount was for work for the EPA. In 2014, Environmental Restoration was listed as one of the top 100 environmental firms in America, with revenue estimated at close to $80 million.
The truth behind the EPA’s Animas River spill is messier than you think http://t.co/Ie5koXOcAg pic.twitter.com/zkePuPZXTq — Popular Science (@PopSci) August 14, 2015
The Navajo Nation is sparring with the EPA over compensation from the Animas River spill http://t.co/WWykRGpuUj
— TIME.com (@TIME) August 13, 2015
This Article (SHAME: EPA Poisoned Animas River For Federal Superfund Financing) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and AnonHQ.com.
The (very likely!) possibility that the spill was intentional has long been on my mind: In order for water to flow into a river that has not flown prior to the specific event leads me to wonder *HOW* did the water get “spilled”? Surely someone had to either breach a dam or create a super-siphon (or a pump) to get the water out of the mine and into the stream, with a dam breach being the most likely / easiest method to achieve.
So somebody spilled a lot of milk — OK, but let’s look at the bigger question: HOW did all that polluted water come to be accumulated in the first place? Next, is there any remaining (in a reservoir)? Then finally, OK, so there is a *need* to treat the water — either the spilled, or any remaining contained, or both — so let’s start the discussion from that perspective working forwards, and work backwards when it comes to determining whom to accuse of what, exactly.