Animas River

We spent a week last year in Durango CO and had a wonderful experience rafting on the Animas river. You have probably heard of it in the news the last few days. The EPA managed to spill toxic waste in it from a plugged up gold mine and now the river is mustard colored and poluted. Much is still unknown on how dangerous the contamination may be but you really need to ask what the EPA is doing to fix and it doesn't appear they are doing much.

I find it ironic this is the same agency that can substantially fine boaters for much more minor spills. So, who is fining the EPA for the mess they created?

Sorry, just venting.

Here are some side by side shots of the river before the EPA accident on the left and after on the right.

The Durango Herald 08/09/2015 | Durango kayaker reacts to Animas River photo that went viral

saw it the other day just horrible

I live 1/4 mile from the Animas. The EPA said today they think there was a 3 million gallon release. A olympic size swimming pool holds 660,000 gallons. There is NO way the river would run that dirty for so many days and only have 3 million gallons. A lot of the sediment is not going down stream and is settling in the rock, gravel, and sand despite some good rains. They say no fish have died yet the build up of lead and arsenic are bound to occur. No mention of mercury but got to be some. The Animas runs into the San Juan and eventually into Lake Powell where it will stay. They are draining our local lake to dilute the river. We have a two week water supply in the reservoir that receive water from the Animas. Business have shut down, farmers are unable to irrigate, and tourism has dropped significantly. Many water wells will be contaminated. Worst part is there is no intention to plug the mine. Spent two months in SE Alaska and spoke with a gentlemen that took a team of scientist to Prince William Sound. Significant amounts of oil were easily found in the sand and rock. EPA trying to cover their asses on this one. The long term impact won't be know for a long time. The fishing was outstanding. Better get used to catch and release. Having grew up in Durango it is quite a tragedy.

Hello, I'm from the government, here to help you!

The EPA tells the locals not to worry....then why were they regulating the mine in the first place? This is going to make the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico a few years ago look insignificant in comparison. However, the EPA is doing a pretty good job of sweeping it under the carpet.

Donsan said:

We spent a week last year in Durango CO and had a wonderful experience rafting on the Animas river. You have probably heard of it in the news the last few days. The EPA managed to spill toxic waste in it from a plugged up gold mine and now the river is mustard colored and poluted. Much is still unknown on how dangerous the contamination may be but you really need to ask what the EPA is doing to fix and it doesn't appear they are doing much.

I find it ironic this is the same agency that can substantially fine boaters for much more minor spills. So, who is fining the EPA for the mess they created?

Sorry, just venting.

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We (US citizens) can't go there! We would be fining ourselves, the tax payers. It is what it is; government incompetence in action.

Where are all of the "non-profit" environmental groups? If this was caused by someone with a profit motive, there would be endless protests and screeches of righteous indignation.

BlueYonder said:

Where are all of the "non-profit" environmental groups? If this was caused by someone with a profit motive, there would be endless protests and screeches of righteous indignation.

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Well, isn't that the truth!

Giggitoni said:

We (US citizens) can't go there! We would be fining ourselves, the tax payers. It is what it is; government incompetence in action.

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Good points, but the folks harmed by this need to be made whole by the US Gov't. Unfortunately, that means they get reimbursed by we, the people. But the right thing should happen here just like BP was made to pay for the Gulf oil spill.

Maybe the gov't can put unemployed to work helping with the cleanup. I fear this may have major repercussions for many, many years to come just like the way we're still dealing with heavy metals in the rivers and bays in Northern CA 150+ years after the gold rush days of the mid-1800s.

Not familiar with the river or mine but how is the EPA responsible for this, was this a government mining operation? I thought the EPA had rules that industry by law was supposed to follow to protect the environment. Did the mine operator ignore the law while the EPA ignored their duty to the public?


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Some of these mines are up to 150 years old. Many of the mines are not "owned" by anyone. So the USEPA steps in and directs the cleanup by using one of their contractors. The contractor is ordered and guided by the EPA to follow a set plan. Often the set plan is flawed and incompetent. Follow this release. It should be interesting to watch the politics and blame game.

Giggitoni said:

Some of these mines are up to 150 years old. Many of the mines are not "owned" by anyone. So the USEPA steps in and directs the cleanup by using one of their contractors. The contractor is ordered and guided by the EPA to follow a set plan. Often the set plan is flawed and incompetent. Follow this release. It should be interesting to watch the politics and blame game.

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Not to mention the EPA selects the contractor who is the "low bidder" and has every incentive to cut corners.

River Cruiser, the EPA is not mentioning any names but my understanding is someone was messing around with the mine sight opening causing the formerly plugged mine to all of a sudden collapse resulting in the release of the toxic water. Should have left well enough alone. I'm sure the mine was likely leaking but what the individual did was open it up so that it was no longer controllable. There is still over a million gallons a day being released from the mine. There are holding ponds that have been built to catch some of the heavy metals and sediment. The EPA has never accurately fessed up with how much water was released initially. Not sure it would be possible to estimate anyway. What is done is done and the Animas River and Lake Powell will never be the same.I understand the EPA's attempts to replug the mine have been futile. May need to find a private company that is competent to handle such an job and plug the mine. Just someone who lives down stream.

From the small amount of information available it would seem that the Contractor, under EPA supervision was attempting to remedy a small leak in the containment barrier. I can only assume this was done without a proper cofferdam or suitable secondary containment. As mentioned the river may look fine in a few days but the heavy metals will be there for a long long time. There is no effective "clean-up" procedure by now they are in the sand, silt, water, deposited all along the banks and will leach forever. Major tragedy those responsible will probably be transferred over to the IRS or some other agency.

Hopefully the EPA has learned a lesson about what could happen when you start screwing around with a closed mine. It may be the individual working for the EPA had good intentions but was ignorant about the quantity of water and heavy metals that had been sealed off for many years. There are hundreds of mines in our area most of which have been dynamited to close off access to the mines. It is rare to find one open and most leach water. The best we can hope for is that El Nino' will come through for us this winter and cause a significant runoff to occur. Lake Powell has been receiving millions of tons of sediment for years and perhaps the heavy metals can be trapped by additional sediment in years to come. There are several uranium mines in the area. Leave them alone unless they prove to be a threat.

Having worked both sides of the coin...government and private sector...there's plenty of greed and incompetency to go around....


Sometimes bad government decisions are based on flawed info from contractors and their inability to handle the job...whether low bidder or not.


we all can probably cite many examples...both ways....

Having mine reclamation experience in my resume including Southwest CO, I can only but say the EPA lacks the skill sets to manage and implement these efforts. Without knowing the specific details of this effort, comments are hard to put forth.

But, many businesses are due compensation for many months of lost revenues. Will it happen? We shall see.

Thank goodness it is the EPA responsible for this Charlie Foxtrot. They must've found a miracle cure for dumping millions of gallons of toxic waste into a closed River/reservoir system. Some time back a private company dumped a few million gallons of oil into a frickin ocean and a decade later we still hear of ramifications. The EPA today reported everything's almost back to normal now, nothing to see here.

Donsan said:

Not to mention the EPA selects the contractor who is the "low bidder" and has every incentive to cut corners.

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What makes you think they didn't award the contract to a minority owned business, regardless of bid?

If BP had done this the EPA would be assessing billions in fines and having strokes about environmental doomsday. As it is, they're telling businesses along the river that everything is just fine, they should open this weekend.

I hadn't heard much about this other than news report on the radio, when I'am on the boat I don't watch much TV news and have the radio on during the day, it's more or less background noise. I googled for info and found this - Cleaning Up Toxic Yellow Sludge Is Just The Beginning Of EPA's Mine Problems
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/08/13/toxic-waste-mine-epa-problem_n_7985666.html
It is the EPAs problem to clean up these sites and unfortunately use public funds when the corporations or people who created them are long gone. Placing blame on any person, corporations, contractors, or govt agency at this point in time is a fools errand for problems created before any of us were born. But people always want a scapegoat for any problems that befall us and if there are no obvious ones then anyone associated with it are fair game for blame whether right or wrong. I feel very sorry for the people who's lives and property have been impacted by this mess created over 100 years ago and hope the EPA can return the affected streams to as near to normal as possible, until the next disaster strikes.



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I wonder if the EPA would have revealed anything to the public or acknowledged they caused the spill at all if the discharge hadn't been so visible, turning the river a bright mustard color for miles and miles. Pretty bad when the watchdog needs a watchdog.

Something interesting that is coming out is the EPA is the gorilla in the closet. Major corporate firms with first hand knowledge as to what went wrong are reluctant to publically state where the issues lie for fear of real retribution on the part of EPA. If one is in the resource business biting the hand that governs is not wise.

Perish the notion of a Congressional hearing making headway, too much money in the form of EPA contracts for nationwide stream remediation is in the pipeline. The CO regulators don't want that largesse jeopardized.

sunchaser said:

Something interesting that is coming out is the EPA is the gorilla in the closet. Major corporate firms with first hand knowledge as to what went wrong are reluctant to publically state where the issues lie for fear of real retribution on the part of EPA. If one is in the resource business biting the hand that governs is not wise.

Perish the notion of a Congressional hearing making headway, too much money in the form of EPA contracts for nationwide stream remediation is in the pipeline. The CO regulators don't want that largesse jeopardized.

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Right on! This is going to be fun to watch.

kthoennes said:

I wonder if the EPA would have revealed anything to the public or acknowledged they caused the spill at all if the discharge hadn't been so visible, turning the river a bright mustard color for miles and miles. Pretty bad when the watchdog needs a watchdog.

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There are plenty of watchdogs within...not everyone who works for the government is a slimeball...

You know how hard it is to actually cover something up for long?...Especially when it is a large object like a river turned color? and not some deep intel or black ops mission....

Wow...

I am not necessarily knee-jerk harsh about government, I'm a gov't manager myself and delivering good public service is much, much harder than most people think. I'd agree with you on that. But if I do something stupid or inept or careless in my public role, I expect to pay the consequences proportional to the screw-up, up to and including losing my job. The fact that I'm a public manager myself reduces my patience with this kind of thing even more though. The agency's response is textbook weasel-y. For example, they write announcements in a passive voice so no one is responsible. "while excavating...water began leaking." -- as if the water made a spontaneous decision to start leaking all by itself. (Professor Steve Aufrecht at the University of Alaska in my MPA program taught us to never write in the disembodied, passive voice, it's a weasel-y thing to do, and he was right.) They issue press releases that are tech babble full of qualifiers and arcane terminology, instead of nice clear, declarative sentences that actually explain something to the general public. They write sentences like this:

"However, comparison to risk-based screening values found these exceedances to below risk screening levels."

That doesn't even make grammatical sense, let alone syntactic sense. And meanwhile I have to worry about my Y-valve lockout because I guess that poses a higher risk than arsenic and cadmium and thallium.

A LOT depends on just how accountable you really are.

If given bad advice...you really want to be accountable?

Don't pay much attention to press releases..they can have varied motives...I wait for official investigations then the followup watchdog investigations.

I like everyone else I have ever known has made mistakes...it is why and what was done to fix them that ultimately was important....the higher up you are...the bigger the consequences sometimes...not necessarily the screwup.

Up to and including losing your job.? In my former job it was up to and including Leavenworth.

kthoennes said:

They issue press releases that are tech babble full of qualifiers and arcane terminology, instead of nice clear, declarative sentences that actually explain something to the general public. They write sentences like this:

"However, comparison to risk-based screening values found these exceedances to below risk screening levels."

That doesn't even make grammatical sense, let alone syntactic sense. And meanwhile I have to worry about my Y-valve lockout because I guess that poses a higher risk than arsenic and cadmium and thallium.

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You work for the guvmutt and don't know guvmuttese???