Like for a century.

I wonder why they felt the need to tamper with this at all.

sooner or later would have reeked more havoc on the environment.. Essentially the crossing your fingers solution?

Many mines of that era are vertical shaft mines (a hole in the ground). If water if collecting in there, it is essentially doing so naturally. It is leaching natural elements out of the mine. All mankind did was dig a hole.

If this was a horizontal shaft mine, I'm not sure how water could collect in this manner.

I need an illustration I guess.

The lower mine has been increasing its discharge for awhile now so they did test bore in the upper mine and realized it had water in it. They failed to account for how much water was in there.

http://www2.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-06/documents/upper-animas-red-and-bonita-bulkhead-fact-sheet-5-22-2015.pdf

http://www.durangoherald.com/article/20140927/NEWS01/140929521/EPA-to-plug-polluted-mine-in-Silverton-

Also, thanks for the enlightenment.

debacle anyway.

Have you seen the results of their deeds?

The plan was to release the water slowly so it could be treated. There was more water there then they knew about, which is the reason the pressure was too great and it burst out in the manner it did.

The reasons they were attempting to treat the water was because it has been leaching out for decades on its own polluting the water. The river directly below the mine was already so polluted it had zero fish populations living there.

Not making excuses here, just trying to provide some facts on the matter.

After all in a few days we’ll here from the right wingers all about how Obama had something to do with this..
Oh and Hillary too.

It's not like they have the money to bring on some kind of massive filtration plant. Put up settling ponds, let the water evaporate, collect the sludge, pile it in a concrete structure that won't appreciably leak, rinse repeat.

http://www2.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-06/documents/upper-animas-red-and-bonita-bulkhead-fact-sheet-5-22-2015.pdf

Settling ponds are used all the time in Western Pennsylvania when it comes to acid mine run off. You end up with three to five large ponds feeding from one pond to the next. Water is often called the universal acid for water interacts with more substances then any other acid or base. At the same time water will drop off elements physically mixed in with it if the water is standing still or moving very slowly. Thus swamps tend to clean up any impunity in the water. Settling ponds are design to duplicate this process. Thus settling ponds are an effective way to handle these impurities in the water.

Now every few years you have to drain one pond at a time both to recover the impurities but also to see how much is coming out of the mine. Every so often someone suggests converting the ponds to a true swamp but nonone has do so, so far. It appears to be the long term solution for Western Pennsylvania coal mines but right now the concentration is on settling ponds.

it's quite a change since I lived there back in the 50's. The hill were swiss cheesed with abandoned coal mines and the run-offs basically killed every small stream, creek and small river with that orange swill . I can still remember the dead creeks with its dead vegetation as we walked through them bare-footed. Still remember to this day the stench and orange coated rocks and pebbles in what once was a pristine stream where my mother would go to pick the water cress that grew there.

The Hughes bore hole in Cambria County produces 3500 gallons of contaminated water a minute. That is 42 million gallons a day. Nothing lives down stream till it hits the Allegheny River. The State is only slowly addressing the problem. Estimates is that it will take at least another 100 years to clean up the mess. Conemaugh Conservation Society is doing the best it can with the limited money but we are slowly addressing the problem.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes_bore_hole

https://www.flickr.com/photos/36682086@N06/3406936865

http://www.tribdem.com/news/local_news/mining-company-seeking-deal-to-clean-up-portage-amd-site/article_2f01fb9d-7e5b-52df-93f3-4d3bf1c64cb1.html

Here is another bad Acid Mine runoff m this is from Luzerne County (I know that is in EASTERN PA, but it show how bad some of these Acid Mine Runoffs are:



http://beyondthebreaker.com/the-paradox-of-pollution-and-art/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Creek

Maybe 30 percent attrition, forced shutdowns, no raises, and unpaid furloughs have caught up with the EPA? The current administration has treated feds like shit, so why be surprised when shit happens? This is what happens you fail to fund an agency.

I wrote Obama that Gina McCarthy did NOT have a good record in CT when she worked for a repuke admin. there, and he should reconsider her for EPA chief. Maybe she did not give the go ahead or know enough to approve this stupid maneuver but I lay this at her door.

who will try to turn this environmental disaster into a call for reducing EPA funding and oversight.. Go Fuck Yourselves!

now they know what happened, maybe you can drink the water now.

Thanks for the pictures. Hey hey EPA, how many fish did you kill today?

And if a pipe installation made it burst it was only a matter of time before further erosion was going to make it burst.

Shame on the town for resisting superfund funding and allowing it to get worse before the EPA could get in there. The toxic discharge from that mine was well known for years.

I have no idea why they would reject it. It's just stupidity.

EPA fucked up by misjudging the top mine's contribution to the leaking. If EPA had more funding to do more thorough assessments then yeah. But that's not your question. Superfund funding helps enormously. But EPA is woefully underfunded as it is.

I don't think a couple of years head start would've saved this from happening. Maybe. But given its enormity, I personally don't think so.

The EPA did fuck up, but it's not their fault, they have only so many resources. Odds are if they had more funding they would've called in more resources to look over this mess and it would've been determined that the top mine was really in a bad state, and they needed to do more to fix it than what we've seen.

In that vein I appreciate that the EPA is taking responsibility, but I don't blame them completely. They did with the resources they had at their disposal the most they could do. If anything the takeaway should be to give the EPA more funding. They underestimated 3 times over. A few more tens of thousands of dollars of research may have prevented it.

In my humble opinion I don't think the EPA had enough information about the state of the mine to go about trying to unplug it. They hired people to do it, they did their assessments, and they simply were wrong. More money may have prevented it, but that is neither here nor there, it happened.

Human error. Doesn't mean we shouldn't support the EPA cleaning up these sites. There are some 10k+ centuries old mines in Colorado leaking crap and killing streams. They should all have a chance to be cleaned up, even with this monumental mistake of judgement.

If it's any consolation a lot of the browning effect is due to iron oxides, yeah there's a lot of other poisonous shit in there, but the visual effect is iron oxide.

Not only pollutes the river but has the double effect of killing tourism. Very bad for the economy of Colorado.

Thus the EPA had to use other funds, which may include Super Fund money. The locals did not what to use Super Fund for that requires a local share and State leadership. Given both the State and locals rejected doing it themselves using super fund money the EPA had to do it.

The local and state leader probably said, "oh, it's not that big of a deal". Maybe we should make them take a swim in that shit.

My college was Environmental Engineering - I know a fuck-up when I see it.





I suspect the EPA lied when they said it wouldn't affect fish and wildlife too.

Science, facts, are essential here. What are the ion concentrations in the water?

Yellow from cadmium? Maybe from food color dyes. Lets get some data here.

The EPA released a statement Monday saying it was sharing information as quickly as possible with the public as its experts evaluate any effects of the spill.

The 3-million gallon spill contains lead, arsenic and other heavy metals. It affected the Animas and San Juan rivers in Colorado and New Mexico before reaching Utah.

http://www2.epa.gov/region8/gold-king-mine-release-emergency-response

Water usually does not look that way.

Last edited Tue Aug 11, 2015, 11:53 PM - Edit history (2)

The Worse is the Hughes bore hole in Cambria County Pennsylvania, but I have posted that elsewhere on this thread but here are some others:

1

http://www.peterscreek.org/PetersCreekWatershed/pcwaAMD1.html



http://www.accdpa.org/conservation-solution-center/watershed/abandoned-mine-drainage/

This appears to be the color of water elsewhere in the US. Here is some water from the Upper South Platte River:



http://learn.uppersouthplatte.org/?page_id=730



http://www.pennsylvaniawatersheds.org/?s=drainage

From Ohio:



http://science.kqed.org/quest/2014/03/04/out-of-sight-out-of-mine/

From Wisconsin (This looks a lot like the Peter Creek photo above but the cite says it is a different stream):



http://www.sierraclub.org/wisconsin/issues/mining

From South Carolina;



http://web1.cnre.vt.edu/lsg/3104/GEOG%20Proj/Tim-AMD%20Pollution/AMD-Pollution%20Effects.html

From Maryland:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mrwubbs/5966821635

So this color might come from mine waste draining into the creeks and rivers. I can't speak to the SC photo but the WI photo has the link http://www.sierraclub.org/wisconsin/issues/<b>mining</b> so I assume this is mine drainage also.

Acid mine runoff is a huge problem in Western Pennsylvania. I was pointing out that the Hughes bore hole produces more poison every day into its nearby waters then this recent blow up. All of these mine wastes have to be dealt with but no one wants to pay the bill. It is estimated it will take over 100 years to stop these acid mine runoff disasters at the pace we are,going today provided no new ones are made of found.

That converts to 9.2 acre foot of liquid. 9.2 acres converts to just under 2.1 city blocks. So that means an area just over 2 blocks by 1 block and 1 foot deep (or more precisely, 1 square block 2.1 feet deep). That I can visualize. 3 million gallons I cannot without breaking it down.

The river water has diluted this a great deal, even with how orange it appears and it doesn't lessen what a disaster this is.

... if my tap water used that river as the source. Even if the water gets clean, any old storm can stir up the sludge on the bottom and put more lead into the water.

Fly fishing should be "catch and release" for a while.

Officials said they believe the spill carried heavy metals -- mainly iron, zinc and copper -- from the mine into a creek that feeds into the Animas.

According to sampling done by the EPA on various points along the Animas River Wednesday and Thursday last week, levels of lead, arsenic, beryllium, cadmium and mercury were extremely high compared with acceptable levels set by the agency, which are technically called "maximum contaminant levels" or "action levels for treatment."

One of the samples of mercury was nearly 10 times higher than the EPA acceptable levels. Samples of beryllium and cadmium were 33 times higher, and one of the arsenic levels was more than 800 times higher.

Exposure to high levels of these metals can cause an array of health problems from cancer to kidney disease to developmental problems in children.

"This is a real mess," said Max Costa, chair of the department of environmental medicine at New York University School of Medicine. "These levels are shocking."

http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/10/us/colorado-epa-mine-river-spill/

The Hughes bore hole in Cambria County Pa has been pouring out 3500 gallons a minute of contaminated water since the 1970s.

Acid mine runoff is a problem that has to be addressed, but to do so costs money.

Tell that to the people living there

A lot of people depend on the river, up and down the waterway.

An arsenic sample tested 26 times higher than the EPA acceptable level.

Lead was even worse -- much worse.

"Oh my God! Look at the lead!" said Joseph Landolph, a toxicologist at the University of Southern California, pointing to a lead level in the Animas River nearly 12,000 times higher than the acceptable level set by the EPA.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/10/us/epa-river-spill-residents/

3500 gallons a minute is a lot more then the 200 to 700 gallons this spill is generating. The Hughes bore hole has been producing 5 to 10 times this spill since the 1970s and it is still discharging 3500 gallons a minute or 210,000 gallons a hour or over 42 million gallons a day since the 1970s. 2 million gallons is trivial when you compare it to 42 million a day. The little Conemaugh river has no fish. When the little Conemaugh flows into the Conemaugh that river has no fish. When the Conemaugh flows into the Kiskiminetas River that river has no fish. When the Kiskiminetas River flows into the Allegheny River the Corp of Eniginers to make sure enough water is released from the Kinzu Dam so the poisons are deluded enough so fish can survive in the Allegheny River.

I am just pointing out this is NOT the worse spill ever nor the worse source of poisons in our rivers, we have several that are ongoing that are worse.

Townspeople affected by the millions of gallons of toxic waste spilled from an abandoned gold mine and now flowing through their communities demanded clarity Tuesday about any long-term threats to their water supply.

Colorado and New Mexico made disaster declarations for stretches of the Animas and San Juan rivers and the Navajo Nation declared an emergency as the waste spread downstream, reaching Lake Powell in Utah sometime this week.

The Navajos, whose nation covers parts of New Mexico, Utah and Arizona, shut down water intake systems and stopped diverting water from the San Juan River. Frustrated tribal council members echoed state officials, insisting that the federal government pay for its mistakes.

"At this point, how long are we going to continue to truck in water? Who's going to pick up the tab? Are we going to hold these people accountable? I want answers from the EPA, but they're nowhere to be found," said David Filfred, a Navajo Nation council delegate. "This is a lifeline. This is our culture. This is who we are."

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/officials-downstream-colorado-mine-spill-demand-answers-33005658

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes_bore_hole





https://www.flickr.com/photos/jblough/542867912/in/album-72157600345553055/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/jblough/542923836/in/album-72157600345553055/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/jblough/542923860/in/album-72157600345553055/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/36682086@N06/3407744920

For more information on acid mine runoff:

http://www.conemaughvalleyconservancy.org/

for US to clean up. And whatever business this was, they're probably hiding any leftover assets in the Caymans so they don't have to pay a cent in taxes.

Always about $$$$$$$$

It is a hand dug mine from the 1800's.

The people who made any profits (if there were any) are long dead.

while privateers got the benefit, even if the benefit was decades ago.

I guess you'll be spouting the same about "that was then, this is now" if you're young enough to see what happens to our now 45 yr. old nukes and the nuke waste building up around the country. That, too, will be abandoned after the nuke companies make their billions and milk the plants for all they're worth, and then abandon the rad waste.

Point is, it doesn't matter when the mine was dug, how it was dug or when it was abandoned. The privateers made off with the $$$$, while we taxpayers who made nothing on this mine have to pay to clean up this disaster.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/epa-contractor-involved-in-colorado-spill-identified-as-environmental-restoration-1439414672
Missouri-based Environmental Restoration LLC was the contractor whose work caused a mine spill in Colorado that released an estimated three million gallons of toxic sludge into a major river system, according to an Environmental Protection Agency official and government documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

?

best I can find is that ER was being paid 37 million for this work?