<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 New legislation aimed at preventing toxic waste spills during cleanup efforts at abandoned mines has been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives.<\/p>\n
The Abandoned Mine Reclamation Safety Act, introduced by Rep. Ra\u00fal Grijalva, D-Ariz, was drafted in response to recommendations from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation\u2019s technical review after the August 2015 Gold King Mine spill. The spill released 3 million gallons of toxic wastewater into the Animas and San Juan rivers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis bill uses the lessons we learned in Colorado to make sure this accident isn\u2019t repeated,\u201d Grijalva said in a statement after the bill was introduced Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Cortez, believes that Good Samaritan legislation, which would allow third-party groups to undertake mine cleanup efforts with some legal protections, should remain the priority over seeking to impose further federal regulations.<\/p>\n
Although similar legislative efforts have failed in the past, Tipton is working with Colorado\u2019s U.S. senators \u2013 Michael Bennet, a Democrat, and Cory Gardner, a Republican \u2013 on Good Samaritan legislation in response to last year\u2019s spill.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe most promising approach to addressing contamination in abandoned mine sites remains through Good Samaritan legislation that empowers those with the necessary technical expertise and qualification \u2013 something missing at the EPA \u2013 to move forward with remediation activities,\u201d said Tipton spokesman Josh Green.<\/p>\n
Grijalva\u2019s newly introduced bill says the legislation would \u201cdirect the secretary of the Interior to promulgate regulations for the safe and environmentally responsible reopening of abandoned mines, and for other purposes.\u201d<\/p>\n
It also would require new federal regulations to improve worker safety, professional engineering reviews to gauge cleanup efforts at abandoned mines and stronger federal oversight of high-risk sites.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know how to make these kinds of spills less likely in the future, so let\u2019s take some action, protect the people impacted by these abandoned mines and support the folks we ask to clean them up,\u201d Grijalva said.<\/p>\n
The legislation was referred to the House Committee on Natural Resources, where Grijalva serves as the ranking member.<\/p>\n
The Abandoned Mine Reclamation Safety Act compliments similar legislation that was introduced in November in response to the Gold King Mine spill. That legislation \u2013 the Hardrock Mining and Reclamation Act of 2015 \u2013 seeks to reform the nation\u2019s hard-rock mining laws and was introduced by Bennet along with fellow New Mexico Democrats Sens. Martin Heinrich and Tom Udall, and Grijalva in the House.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
regulations for cleanup not a priority<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":107254,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[13,239,327],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-107253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-mining","tag-silverton"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107253"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=107253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}