Discussion for article #239683
The reporting on this holding pond blowout just reeks. In an effort to put the blame for the contaminated water solely on the EPA the media including this article completely ignore the fact that this mine was privately owned by the “San Juan Group”. That group of investors as well as the citizens in the local mining community knew that the abandoned mine was leaking toxic water into the river because all the fish had been killed off a decade or more ago. The EPA wanted to declare the entire area a Superfund site because of the wide spread contamination caused by mining but the locals and mine owners were afraid such a designation would prevent reopening the mines that supply local employment as well as lowering their property values. So the mine owners walked away from the contaminated dam holding the millions of gallons of water with more leaching in every day. The EPA attempts to find the source of the contamination and in the process unleashes the impounded water into the already contaminated river. What the EPA did was an accident but what the owners did was intentional criminal neglect. Why in the name of dog is it so hard for reporters to include that history into it’s ongoing disinformation campaign against the EPA?
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Thanks. After reading the 4th paragraph I was going to say it sounded like it was probably slow leaking anyway but your information answered any further questions I had.
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The rivers keep being described as “pristine” in news reports, but several articles have pointed out that they were far from it. The waters were clear in part because there was little living in them. There wasn’t the heavy metal pollution, but the water was already acidic from leaching of mine tailings.
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I keep looking for the conclusion that’s supposed to follow from the foreknowledge that’s the topic of this article and I’m having trouble finding it. They knew it could happen? OMG! Well that change everything! Clearly, if you know a thing can happen and you’re taking steps to keep it happening that fail, that makes it your fault the thing happened!
I swear to god, the squirrels who raid my birdfeeder have more reasoning ability than the average journalist these days.
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The height of Republican style “Why haven’t you cleaned up my mess for me?” thinking.
Before I moved to Colorado I was hiking with friends and was playing around in a stream when native resident friends had fun explaining to me that I was just downstream from an abandoned mine and a huge pile of tailings. Before that day I didn’t know what mine tailings were. Now I’ll never forget.
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That is so true.
But then those squirrels are mighty tricky.
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There’s no comparison. When I look at the squirrels attempting to raid my birdfeeder, I see complicated mathematical calculations in their thought ballooons. When I look at reporters I don’t even see thought balloons.
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Thank you for this. TPM should copy and paste your comment to the end of their article as an Update/Correction to the rather one-sided focus of the article itself.
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Maybe we could get the press to use this as a "teaching " moment. Surely some of these geniuses could research their own files about all the defeated and/or unenforced mining regulations that may have helped the situation 50, 80 or 100 years ago. And don’t leave out our old friend Acid Rain, a term you don’t hear much anymore because it’s caused by coal burning power plants. Couldn’t some big media company from back East, like Comcast or Fox or Brietbart, come in here and find out what really caused this. Come on, it really isn’t all that hard.
We know why this happened and it has nothing to do with the EPA! I can’t think of a better reason to cast the Old Stink-eye on the XL and Fracking, among lots of other things. Instead, we just use the old axiom, “We could have prevented it then, but we didn’t, so let’s do THAT again”!
It’s the same damned story! Somebody run with it!
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I have several friends who are working there…I will get the real story as soon as they come home…I have talked to a friend who was there several days before the event, and they were worried about the “dam” breaking…As a Nation who loves to blame everyone but themselves, the gop is the worst of them…they cut, cut, and cut from the budgets of the very agencies that protect Americans and the Land we Live On…
Shit, everyone knew and still knows. This isn’t the only abandoned mine up there by far. There are about 10,000 more and more downstream. The main whitewater point that all the rafting, kayaking, tubing and events happen at in Durango is at, Smelter Mountain, named after the operations that used to go on there. The tailings were used in concrete and many of the older homes in town have this in their foundations.
All these areas are old mining towns and they all took metals from the river including uranium which is partially radioactive.
This particular disaster happened above Silverton named after the silver mines. Up there, the rocks of the Rocky Mountains and water are all tinted red and that orangish color that eventually washed down.