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I did, they were there for one reason and one reason only. Did you read that part? Had nothing to do with leaky water. Go back and reread why they were there. It is in what I posted earlier in the excerpt.here a link for ya to read:they did clean it up. Had it under control, told the EPA to leave it alone. And...........The company that operated the mine should have cleaned up the site completely. There should have been no tailing pond to tap. The estate of the mining company owners should be the ones paying.
Is that the Fox News version of the story? Well, I can't argue with political faith.
Why Was The Environmental Protection Agency Messing With A Mine Above Silverton KUNC
Thanks to By Stephanie Paige Ogburn and KUNC Music;
excerpt:
"Enter The Environmental Protection Agency
For years, the EPA has wanted to name areas around Silverton as a Superfund site. This brings funding for cleanups. The town, in turn, has resisted, fearing the label would be toxic to tourism. (pun intended.)
Recently, the town and the agency came to a sort of detente. The EPA wouldn’t list the site as Superfund, also called the National Priority List, as long as efforts were made to improve water quality near the mines. The EPA agreed to pay for those efforts, which recently got underway."
Wish you environ wackos would do your homework before making yourselves look foolish. Then I wouldn't have to go and pull links to prove you were in error.
Did you continue reading?
Somewhat ironically, the Gold King mine was not the object of the cleanup. The agency had planned to plug a mine [.pdf] just below it, the Red and Bonita Mine, with the goal of reducing acid runoff from that mine.
Since mines are interconnected, however, and a plug in one can lead to more water flowing out the other, the agency planned to “remove the blockage and reconstruct the portal at the Gold King Mine in order to best observe possible changes in discharge caused by the installation of Red and Bonita Mine bulkhead.”
That project began July 2015. The Gold King Mine released its toxic load at 10:30 a.m. August 4, 2015.
Peter Butler, who serves as a co-coordinater of the Animas River Stakeholders Group, a roundtable, said the EPA knew there was water sitting at the mine.
“It was known that there was a pool of water back in the mine, and EPA had a plan to remove that water and treat it, you know, slowly. But things didn’t go quite the way they planned and there was a lot more water in there then they thought, and it just kind of burst out of the mine.”
Butler offered cautious support for the EPA’s work at the mine, in light of the spill.
“I think that they were doing a reasonable job, maybe there were some other steps that could have been taken, that could have prevented it. But I think it was a big surprise for almost everybody,” said Butler.
Even without agency mistakes, mines do experience blowouts from time to time -- although generally not on so large a scale, said Butler.