Skip to content

Before the Spill: Animas River, Durango, Colorado

Fly fishing on the Animas River in Durango, Colorado in the fall.

This is where the toxic spill happened in the past week; over 100 miles of river has been poisoned so far.

That toxic spill is what the "free market" looks like. Mining companies are "free" to fail to set aside enough money to provide adequate cleanup, then go bankrupt, and the executives are free to do this knowingly and remain completely shielded from all liability. It happens over and over and over, all across the country.

So mines that were never really economically viable with cleanup costs considered are free to develop anyway, and the rest of the country is free to have the burden of the costs dumped on them (not to mention having toxic waste dumped in their water supply).

That's why there was a million gallons of toxic waste water for the EPA to (try to manage and) accidentally release in the first place… the market was free and unregulated enough to leave it there.

Such a spill could happen at a mine in Redding, California, where the +U.S. Environmental Protection Agency operates a treatment plant that holds back millions of gallons of Iron Mountain Mine waste that could poison the Sacramento River, then San Francisco Bay. It almost happened already (1997?).

And to think that some Presidential candidates want to eliminate the EPA, and simply let these toxic floods happen at random and with more frequency.

How will the free, unregulated market work for you when your water supply is poisoned?

#animasriver #colorado #durango #freemarket #EPA
www.MyPhotoGuides.com

 

Comments

18 thoughts on “Before the Spill: Animas River, Durango, Colorado”

  1. I agree that some Presidential candidates have a history of the type of bad behaviour that you described +Jeff Sullivan. If they refuse to be held accountable for their own businesses, we sure don't want them encouraging others to do the same.

  2. Y'know I want to share this with correspondents who like those candidates, because it's not E.P.A. as such; it's U.N. ideology being pressed upon us through E.P.A. Yes, rivers need protection and garbage needs filtering, even if the way this administration seems to want to handle those jobs is heinous. And that's a beautiful picture.

  3. Interesting background from roughly one month earlier, in this article:
    "Red and Bonita began draining in 2006 after the Sunnyside Gold Corp., the last major mining operation in Silverton, plugged the American Tunnel in three places. The small Red and Bonita Mine, founded in the 1800s, was never productive."

    The article describes more: a defunct mine from the 1800s starts to leak when a contemporary mine is being addressed, and a third one turns out to have a hydrologic connection and fails. It was a complex "house of cards" long before it was dumped on the EPA.
    http://www.durangoherald.com/article/20150628/NEWS01/150629600/EPA-to-plug-Silverton-mine-soon

  4. This Durango Herald article really gives a good background on what the EPA has been dealing with and just how hard their job has been trying to minimize the water contamination from these old mines. Maybe in the future they will develop guidelines for safely shutting down mining operations to minimize the risk of these toxic flows.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Loading Facebook Comments ...