EPA cleanup crew to blame for toxic Colorado mining spill, report reveals

Source: Associated Press

EPA cleanup crew to blame for toxic Colorado mining spill, report reveals

Associated Press in Billings, Montana
Thursday 22 October 2015 19.54 BST

Government investigators squarely blamed the US Environmental Protection Agency Thursday for a 3m gallon wastewater spill from a Colorado gold mine, saying an EPA cleanup crew rushed its work and failed to consider the complex engineering involved, triggering the very blowout it hoped to avoid.

The spill that fouled rivers in three states would have been avoided had the EPA team checked on water levels inside the Gold King Mine before digging into its entrance, Interior Department investigators concluded.

The Associated Press obtained the findings on the 5 August spill on Thursday prior to their public release. The report has implications across the United States, where hundreds of thousands of abandoned mines have yet to be cleaned up.

The report found that the root causes of the accident began several decades earlier, with changes made by mining companies that altered the flow of groundwater through a series of interconnected tunnels in the extensively mined Upper Animas river watershed.

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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/22/us-blames-epa-toxic-colorado-mining