The EPA, one of the most oppressive, hectoring agencies in government, released 3 million gallons of toxic sludge into western waterways.
From The Wall Street Journal.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy apologized Tuesday for a mine spill in Colorado that her agency caused last week and planned to travel to the area Wednesday, amid increasing criticism from lawmakers about the EPA’s response.
Ms. McCarthy said at a news conference in Washington that she was still learning about what happened, responding to a question about whether the EPA was reviewing changes in how it cleans up old mines. “I don’t have a complete understanding of anything that went on in there,” she said. “If there is something that went wrong, we want to make sure it never goes wrong again.”
Sen. Cory Gardner (R., Colo.) said in an interview Tuesday he doubted the EPA had an adequate network set up in the region to respond to the disaster. “Something did go wrong, and here we are, a week later, and there still remains a lack of understanding not only with what happened, but what’s actually at stake in terms of public health,” Mr. Gardner said.
An EPA cleanup crew on Aug. 5 accidentally triggered a breach in an abandoned gold mine in the southwestern part of Colorado, releasing an estimated three million gallons of toxic, mustard-tinted sludge through a river system that also spans New Mexico and Utah. The sludge, which flowed down the Animas River and emptied into the San Juan River in New Mexico, contains such contaminants as lead and arsenic from the Gold King Mine, north of Silverton, Colo., one of thousands of abandoned mines across the western U.S.
The toxic waste is spreading all the way through Colorado and New Mexico:
A vast, poisonous plume of mine waste had been accidentally released into a Colorado creek, and it was now streaming inexorably toward the San Juan river.
Residents of Shiprock, N.M., a Navajo Nation community roughly 130 miles downstream from the spill, could expect to see the plume arrive in a couple of days. All irrigation systems would be turned off, and drinking water would be drawn from an emergency supply stored in tanks in town.
This is the same agency that engages in “sue and settle” tactics, a politically driven policy that obstructs the efforts of states to clean up environmental problems on their own, and instead implements jackbooted “command and control”.
They also want to develop a wireless system that can be placed in hotels to track how long guests are in the shower, all in an attempt to get them to “modify their behavior.”
The EPA released personal information on roughly 80,000 American farmers and cattle ranchers, in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by radical hostile enviro-nuts, Earth Justice, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and Pew Charitable Trust in a blatant act of intimidation.
As part of Obama’s power grabs and his ‘green agenda’, his regime declared itself lord and master of all bodies of water in the U.S.
FYI: How the EPA got so much power and who is behind it:
The EPA was established by Richard Nixon in 1970, in response to the widespread smog and pollution problem throughout the U.S. What began as an effort to ensure a clean environment, soon took on proportions of an out-of-control big government, punitive actions, and regulation. Instead of using a common sense approach, they enacted ham-handed laws that cost lives. The use of the pesticide DDT was restricted in 1972, resulting in the deaths of millions of people in Africa who died from mosquito-borne malaria.
In 2007, the EPA got more authority when the Supreme Court ruled that the Clean Air Act gave the EPA the right to regulate “greenhouse gases”, including carbon dioxide. That was like giving crack to an addict. Carbon dioxide is what we exhale. It’s what plants ingest to use during photosynthesis to produce glucose; their growth material. Junk science trumps real science at the EPA. (“global warming”, anyone?)
The agency’s stifling anti-coal regulations are written by the George Soros-backed Center for American Progress; a leftwingnut think tank opposed to free market enterprise and capitalism in general.
When British petroleum accidentally spilled oil in the Gulf, the EPA was all over them like stink on shit. BP took responsibility and cleaned it up on their own.
You can bet your ass that the taxpayer will cover the cost of the EPA’s mistake.
I’d love to see the EPA reamed up the ass and disbanded for this shit, but aside from damage control in the form of PR, don’t expect it to happen. Under Obama, corrupt government agencies are immune from liability.
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