![This image was taken during the peak outflow from the Gold King Mine spill at 10:57 a.m. Aug. 5. The waste-rock dump can be seen eroding on the right. Federal investigators placed blame for the blowout squarely on engineering errors made by the Environmental Protection Agency’s-contracted company in a 132-page report released Thursday [October 22, 2015]](https://coyotegulch.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/goldkingminespill1057am08052015viaepa.png)
From The Denver Post (Bruce Finley):
Of the 230 inactive mines the state recognized six months ago as causing the worst damage to Colorado waterways, state officials say 148 have not been fully evaluated.
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has cobbled together $300,000 for an “inventory initiative” to round up records and set priorities. The agency is enlisting help from the Colorado Geological Survey at the Colorado School of Mines.
Colorado officials hope attention on the Animas River after the EPA-triggered spill at the Gold King Mine in August will spur action at scores of other inactive mines contaminating waterways. After the disaster, the state identified the worst 230 leaking mines draining into creeks and rivers.
There are an estimated 23,000 inactive mines in Colorado and 500,000 around the West. State officials estimate mining wastewater causes 89 percent of the harm to thousands of miles of waterways statewide.
State records reviewed by The Denver Post reveal numerous examples of day-by-day degradation, but state mining regulators lament they are too poor to launch cleanups and few individual sites qualify for federal Superfund intervention.
“We don’t know what funding is going to be available,” said Bruce Stover, state abandoned mines program director, who has worked on this issue for two decades.
Meanwhile, the EPA is shooting for a lead role on Cement Creek. Here’s a report from Jesse Paul writing for The Denver Post. Here’s an excerpt:
The Environmental Protection Agency has sent a letter to Silverton’s leaders formally proposing a Superfund cleanup of the area’s abandoned mines and full of promises about the controversial remedy.
The memo comes as the town is in the final stages of deciding whether to embrace the Superfund program and seeks assurances about what the federal dollars would mean.
The letter, from the top EPA official overseeing Superfund in Colorado, quells fears about the name of a national priority site and says the remediation would include the development or study of new mine cleanup technologies.
“The EPA is committed to early and meaningful community participation during the entire Superfund process,” wrote EPA official Bill Murray.
The letter, made public Friday, says the town and San Juan County have agreed to call the project area the “Bonita Peak Mining District Site.” Silverton’s leaders worried that naming the cleanup after their community would scare away visitors and destroy their tourism-based economy.
“We received the letter shortly before it was made public,” said Mark Eddy, spokesman for Silverton and San Juan County. “We have made good progress in our discussions with the EPA regarding a Superfund listing. We are reviewing the letter to determine the full impact of the commitments the EPA has made.”
The EPA also promises to actively include local input in the remediation and be open to shrinking the site’s boundaries depending on the amount of contaminants found.
Also, the EPA official in charge at the Gold King Mine knew about the blowout risk, according to this report from Jesse Paul writing for The Denver Post: Here’s an excerpt:
The Environmental Protection Agency employee overseeing work at the Gold King Mine was aware of blowout danger at the site before a massive August wastewater spill, according to a report released Thursday.
The revelation, in findings by congressional Republicans, comes in contrast to the EPA’s claims that the risk was underestimated ahead of excavation at the mine’s collapsed opening. That work ultimately led to the disaster.
Hays Griswold, the agency’s on-scene coordinator, wrote in an October e-mail to other EPA officials that he personally knew the blockage “could be holding back a lot of water and I believe the others in the group knew as well.”
“This is why I was approaching (the mine) as if it were full,” he wrote of the day of the Aug. 5 release at the Gold King.
The note provides more indications the EPA probably had knowledge of the potentially looming disaster at the mine long before workers accidentally unleashed 3 million gallons of contaminants. The Oct. 28 e-mail came in response to an independent Bureau of Reclamation report about the spill released six days earlier.