{"id":107710,"date":"2015-12-10T22:09:43","date_gmt":"2015-12-11T05:09:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/disagreement-between-colorado-and-epa-over-gold-king-mine-spill-lingers\/"},"modified":"2015-12-10T22:09:43","modified_gmt":"2015-12-11T05:09:43","slug":"disagreement-between-colorado-and-epa-over-gold-king-mine-spill-lingers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/disagreement-between-colorado-and-epa-over-gold-king-mine-spill-lingers\/","title":{"rendered":"Disagreement between Colorado and EPA over Gold King Mine spill lingers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"A
A dispute between the federal government\u2019s Environmental Protection Agency and Colorado\u2019s Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety only deepened Wednesday, as the EPA released documents to back up its insistence that the state agency was involved in the decision-making leading up to the accidental Aug. 5 Gold King Mine spill by an EPA-contracted team. The state agency has said it had no authority to assess, manage or approve work at the mine.<\/span>File photo courtesy of Eco Flight<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

DENVER \u2013 Additional details released this week by the Environmental Protection Agency concerning the Gold King Mine spill continue to highlight the state\u2019s possible role in the disaster.<\/p>\n

The EPA released further details on Tuesday evening, hours before a congressional panel on Wednesday morning would interrogate Interior Secretary Sally Jewell on her department\u2019s role in investigating the August spill that turned the Animas River a mustard-yellow color.<\/p>\n

State officials, in a September letter, contradicted the EPA\u2019s account of how the incident unfolded. Mike King, executive director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, was clear that the Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety (DRMS) \u201cdid not have any authority to manage, assess, or approve any work at the Gold King Mine.<\/p>\n

\u201c(DRMS experts) were at the Gold King site the morning of Aug. 5 at EPA\u2019s invitation, but their visit had nothing to do with work on the Gold King adit that morning, and they did not determine or advise that excavation of the adit should be continued,\u201d King wrote.<\/p>\n

The EPA has acknowledged fault in the incident, in which an estimated 3 million gallons of mining sludge poured into the Animas on Aug. 5. The river tested for initial spikes in heavy metals, including lead and arsenic.<\/p>\n

The EPA found \u201cinsufficient\u201d planning led to the spill. A contracted team was beginning reclamation work at Gold King with excavation at the entrance to the mine when debris gave way, releasing the contaminated wastewater. The team should have tested water pressure by drilling into the mine, investigations have found.<\/p>\n

The EPA has maintained since an Aug. 24 internal investigation that the state was on board with a plan to send drainage piping through the entrance of the mine, despite King stating that \u201coperations at Gold King were entirely under EPA management.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the documents released Tuesday evening, the EPA does not retract any statements regarding the state\u2019s role, instead further underscoring its partnership. \u201cThroughout the winter and early spring months of 2015, EPA, DRMS and others were developing plans for an approach to assess a path forward for the (Gold King Mine) site \u2026\u201d the newest narrative from the EPA states.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith consultation from DRMS as well as contractor support, the team began additional excavation to identify the location of bedrock above and around the adit \u2026\u201d the EPA account continues.<\/p>\n

Despite the discrepancy between the state and federal accounts of the incident, the EPA maintains that the state played a role. \u201cThe documents released in the addendum, as well as documents released previously, reflect the cooperation between our two agencies. EPA was working collaboratively with the Colorado Division of Reclamation and Mining Safety at the Gold King Mine site as well as other sites in the area,\u201d said Nancy Grantham, an EPA spokeswoman. \u201cEPA was the lead agency on the site but was working closely with the state and with the Animas River Stakeholder Group. We stand by the contents of our internal review and addendum.\u201d<\/p>\n

Todd Hartman, a spokesman for the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, said he does not believe the additional details from the EPA were intended to address King\u2019s concerns.<\/p>\n

The supplemental narrative follows up on an October Interior Department review of the incident, as well as reservations expressed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers regarding the scope of the investigations.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt does not appear this addendum takes into account, or was designed to address, concerns raised by the Department of Natural Resources about the descriptions of DRMS activities outlined in EPA\u2019s Internal Review,\u201d Hartman said. \u201cDNR laid out those matters in a letter to the EPA Inspector General in September, and would again refer to it in addressing characterizations contained in this addendum.\u201d<\/p>\n

pmarcus@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Federal agency continues to insist that the state played a role<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":107711,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[304,174,738,781,222,13,239,295,303],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-107710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-animas-river","tag-environmental-cleanup","tag-environmental-issue","tag-environmental-politics","tag-environmental-pollution","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-mining","tag-water","tag-water-pollution"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107710","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=107710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107710"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=107710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}