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EPA's Yellow River Restoring Itself, So They Say

8/17/2015

5 Comments

 
PictureCDN.turner

     Our pals at the Environmental Protection Agency who are deviling Whatcom County farmers at an ever-increasing pace deserve a new moniker: Environmental Pollution Agency.

   Five days after the EPA had their little oops moment, releasing toxic chemicals into a 126 mile river which is a tributary of the San Juan River and the Colorado River System, news agency CNN described it's utter frustration in this news report, Pollution Is Flowing Faster Than Facts:   "The mustard hue of the Animas River in Colorado -- the most visible effect of a mistake by the Environmental Protection Agency that dumped millions of gallons of pollutants into the water -- is striking.

Just a glance at a photo of the orange-yellowish slush is enough to know that something seems wrong. Scientists will have to say just how wrong, and possibly dangerous, the contamination is, though five days after the spill answers are few.

Just how polluted is the river? Is drinking water in peril? Are businesses dependent on the river out of luck?

One question that has been answered is the size of the spill: more than triple than originally estimated. The U.S. Geological Survey reported the size of the spill to be more than 3 million gallons, compared with the initial EPA estimate of 1 million gallons."
 ...more

Sooo .... just two days after that revelation, EPA began to claim that the river is “restoring itself."  So said the country’s top environmental official on Thursday. And she added that deep-pockets-EPA is coughing-up an absurdly low $500,000 to help the locals.  WE couldn't make this up - see the video of this statement yourself below.

Yes indeed. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy told reporters that the water quality has returned to “pre-incident conditions” after toxic sludge from an abandoned gold mine upstream in southern Colorado flowed into it. “The very good news is that we see that this river is restoring itself.”

Her agency has taken full responsibility for the spill, in which more than three million gallons of toxic wastewater spewed out of the Gold King Mine near Silverton, Colorado, while an EPA crew was cleaning it up.

On Wednesday, Colorado officials said it was safe for Durango — the town just downstream from the spill site — to pull drinking water from the river again. [NBC video and story]...


Picture
Click on the picture above, see and hear the statement yourself.  WE couldn't make up such a thing.  WE do wonder what brand of brownies our pals at the Environmental Protection Agency might be snacking on in Colorado, to hallucinate so.
5 Comments
Karl Uppiano link
8/17/2015 01:49:46 am

Her agency has taken full responsibity? Is that a fact? Probably nothing like the kind of "responsibility" they routinely impose on private citizens and businesses for real, imagined or potential damage on a much smaller scale.

Like that Idaho couple who were fined tens of thousands of dollars per day for unwittingly disturbing dry "wetlands" (you read that right), in the process of building a home on their own property. They won their case in the US Supreme Court, but they were ruined financially. For no reason. Responsibility my arse!

Reply
WE Editors
8/17/2015 03:47:05 am

Oh yes, the Sackett case. Fined $75,000 a day for years for working on their 0.63 acre parcel with no nexus to navigable waters. That fight goes on (Google "PLF Sackett case") and see their 2015 pleading for justice. Nightmares like this are the stuff of dreams to our local bureaucrats who are wreaking terror on farmers at an increasing pace.

Reply
Don Easterbrook
8/18/2015 12:58:17 am

The statement by the head of the EPA that 3 millions gallons of highly toxic sludge that the water quality has returned to “pre-incident conditions" can only be a measure of just how stupid this woman is. The river water may become clearer, but sludge will fill the pore spaces between particles on the bed of the rivers and won't be free of toxic chemicals for decades.

Reply
WE Editors
8/18/2015 06:29:32 am

The plot thickens. The Wall Street Journal has just reported that "Environmental Restoration [a Missouri-based Environmental Restoration LLC which was the contractor whose work caused a mine spill in the Animas River] President Dennis Greaney in a written statement released on Thursday said the company couldn’t provide additional information about the incident, citing a confidentiality agreement it signed with EPA." Such a deal - not unlike the "science" gathering and consulting contracts that Whatcom County has been handing out for years.

Reply
Lorraine Newman
8/20/2015 04:05:24 am

How can anything to do with this be confidential from the very people who will have to pay to clean up this mess. We the Taxpayers!!!!

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