{"id":29025,"date":"2024-02-23T00:06:30","date_gmt":"2024-02-23T07:06:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/without-abdicating-authority-epa-responds-to-butler-criticism\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T00:46:47","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T06:46:47","slug":"without-abdicating-authority-epa-responds-to-butler-criticism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/without-abdicating-authority-epa-responds-to-butler-criticism\/","title":{"rendered":"Without abdicating authority, EPA responds to Butler criticism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Attorney
Attorney General Phil Weiser met with community stakeholders in Durango on Thursday to discuss how to spend settlement funds to remediate environmental damages in and around the Bonita Peak Mining District Superfund site, as seen here on a 2016 Ecoflight. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file)<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Nearly three months have passed since Peter Butler, the former chair of the Community Advisory Group for the Bonita Peak Mining District, announced he was stepping away from the role in a scathing five-page memorandum criticizing the Environmental Protection Agency and the Superfund process.<\/p>\n

And although EPA officials say they are not making changes directly in response to Butler\u2019s memo, which did not contain new revelations, they are meeting with communities and leaders near the Bonita Peak Mining District and addressing some of the concerns Butler highlighted.<\/p>\n

For five years, Butler chaired the group that represented the community\u2019s seat at the table as the EPA addresses 48 historic sources of mine waste surrounding Silverton. The district was formally designated as a Superfund site in 2016, a year after the Gold King Mine spill.<\/p>\n

In a meeting with La Plata County commissioners and staff Wednesday, EPA Community Involvement Coordinator Meg Broughton recognized that the memo was \u201cof concern\u201d for the Board of County Commissioners and said the meeting was an opportunity to revisit some of the topics it highlighted.<\/p>\n

Much of the criticism Butler leveled stemmed from a lack of communication between EPA officials and CAG members, Lead Remedial Project Manager Joy Jenkins said.<\/p>\n

In the memo, Butler argued that water quality data from Animas Canyon collected by CAG volunteers who hike miles each month to grab samples was neither used nor appreciated; he said that an oft-referenced long-term monitoring plan is not publicly available and lamented what he viewed as excessive spending that has yielded little in the way of results.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that we haven\u2019t done the best job of always circling back with the community groups about how we\u2019re incorporating the feedback they\u2019ve given us,\u201d Jenkins said in an interview with The Durango Herald. \u201c\u2026 W<\/em>e haven\u2019t done a good enough job of saying, \u2018Hey, we appreciate this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

She said the long-term plan Butler referenced is in fact available, albeit by a different name.<\/p>\n

The Superfund process, established in the cumbersome Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, is prescriptive and contains few requirements for public engagement, Broughton explained, as she and Jenkins pledged to improve communication.<\/p>\n

Butler\u2019s criticism was largely leveled at administrative elements of the Superfund process, rather than the individuals involved.<\/p>\n

\"Butler\"
Butler<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Broughton said the agency is continually experimenting with new ways to incorporate the community\u2019s input. Butler\u2019s memo was addressed to his fellow CAG members and not the EPA, she pointed out, highlighting that changes in how the EPA engages with the CAG are a part of an adaptive management strategy, not in direct response to Butler.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to engage the CAG and the Silverton Planning Group, which is our other key stakeholder group, in new ways all the time,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The latest example came two weeks ago, with the arrival of the conceptual site model of the Mayflower Mill tailings piles. The 140-page technical document will help EPA officials devise a solution to address the heavy metals flowing out of mine waste piles.<\/p>\n

And rather than share it with the CAG after the fact, EPA officials decided to conduct a simultaneous review of the document and discuss it all together at Thursday\u2019s CAG meeting.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a great cosmic experiment,\u201d Broughton said. \u201cIt could be good, it could be great.\u201d<\/p>\n

Federal agencies are not naturally disposed to incorporate public input, Broughton told commissioners Wednesday. And so the high-level of involvement demanded by true experts within the Durango and Silverton communities is unusual, and accommodating it is not baked into EPA culture.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all experimental,\u201d Broughton said. \u201cThis is this is not in a handbook. We\u2019re making it up as we go.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

quality expert left role in November citing lack of engagement by federal agency<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29026,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[2730,174,739,2461,28,1680,239,327],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-29025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-bonita-peak-mining-district","tag-environmental-cleanup","tag-environmental-protection-agency","tag-gold-king-mine-spill","tag-headlines","tag-la-plata-county-commissioners","tag-mining","tag-silverton"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29025","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=29025"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80610,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29025\/revisions\/80610"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29025"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=29025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}