{"id":96450,"date":"2018-12-28T20:27:49","date_gmt":"2018-12-29T03:27:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/plant-treats-gold-king-mine-waste-despite-government-shutdown\/"},"modified":"2018-12-28T20:27:49","modified_gmt":"2018-12-29T03:27:49","slug":"plant-treats-gold-king-mine-waste-despite-government-shutdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/plant-treats-gold-king-mine-waste-despite-government-shutdown\/","title":{"rendered":"Plant treats Gold King Mine waste despite government shutdown"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The water-treatment plant north of Silverton that treats Gold King Mine waste will continue to operate despite the government shutdown.<\/span>Courtesy of the Environmental Protection Agency<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Despite the government shutdown, now in its second week, the water-treatment plant that cleans mine waste from the Gold King Mine will not cease operations, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.<\/p>\n

Richard Mylott, a spokesman for the EPA based in Denver, confirmed in an email to The Durango Herald<\/em> that \u201cthe plant will continue to operate regardless of shutdown status.\u201d<\/p>\n

After failing to come to an agreement on spending for the new year, the federal government entered a partial shutdown Dec. 20, suspending funding for many agencies.<\/p>\n

According to a report in The Washington Post<\/a>, the EPA\u2019s acting administrator, Andrew Wheeler, told staff late last week there was enough funding to keep the EPA running until Friday.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, EPA\u2019s Region 8 office, which covers Colorado, posted on Twitter that the agency has<\/a> \u201csufficient funds to operate for a limited period of time and will remain open\u201d this week.<\/p>\n

Mylott said although the EPA is not currently in shutdown status, that will be re-evaluated if the government shutdown continues.<\/p>\n

Regardless of what happens at the national level, there is no risk the water-treatment plant will be shut down, too, he said.<\/p>\n

The EPA built a $1.5 million temporary water-treatment plant, located about 10 miles north of Silverton along Cement Creek, a tributary of the Animas River, in October 2015, three months after the Gold King Mine spill.<\/p>\n

The spill, triggered by an EPA-contracted crew working on the inactive mine, sent a torrent of mine waste down the Animas and San Juan rivers, affecting three states and two Native American tribes.<\/p>\n

Since the treatment plant went online, costs have been $1.5 million a year \u2013 or about $28,850 a week \u2013 to cover operations and maintenance.<\/p>\n

Mylott said an employee visits the plant daily, weather permitting, for inspections, and equipment installed on scene allows operators to monitor the site from afar.<\/p>\n

Already, the water-treatment plant has improved water quality downstream, Cynthia Peterson, a spokeswoman for EPA, said in a previous interview.<\/p>\n

Peter Butler with the Animas River Stakeholders Group agreed that the treatment plant is improving water quality, but the data still need to be analyzed to understand the full extent.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sure it\u2019s making a difference in Cement Creek, I think everyone would agree with that,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I think it\u2019s making some difference in the Animas, but I couldn\u2019t tell you how much.\u201d<\/p>\n

What impact the government shutdown might have on the Bonita Peak Superfund site is unclear. Mylott did not immediately respond to follow-up questions Wednesday afternoon.<\/p>\n

The Superfund site, which consists of 48 mining-related sites responsible for degrading water quality in the Animas River, was declared in 2016, about a year after the Gold King Mine spill.<\/p>\n

Because most of the sites are inaccessible during winter, there was no on-the-ground work happening that could have been affected by the government shutdown.<\/p>\n

EPA staff members, however, are working on a number of matters on the Superfund site, namely a final decision on an interim quick action plan, a human health and ecological risk study, as well as an overall, long-term cleanup plan.<\/p>\n

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

budget battle will not affect operations<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":96451,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[304,2730,739,2138,2461,303],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-96450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-animas-river","tag-bonita-peak-mining-district","tag-environmental-protection-agency","tag-gold-king-mine","tag-gold-king-mine-spill","tag-water-pollution"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96450","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=96450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96450"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=96450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}