DID THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ENGAGE IN ENVIRONMENTAL SABOTAGE?
|| By FITSNEWS || Last week the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) accidentally dumped millions of gallons of toxic waste from a long-abandoned gold mine into the Animas River in Colorado.
But was this environmental catastrophe really “accidental?”
Our friends at Zero Hedge have uncovered an obscure letter to the editor published on July 30, 2015 in The Silverton (Colorado) Standard which not only predicts the precise timing of this disaster, but argues the whole thing is part of an EPA conspiracy to tap into federal “Superfund” cleanup money.
Written by retired geologist Dave Taylor, the letter warns local residents that “the EPA is setting your town and the area up for a Superfund blitzkrieg.”
Specifically, Taylor predicts that “within seven days … all of the 500 (gallons per minute) flow will return to Cememnt (sic) Creek.” He’s referring to the contamination caused by the EPA’s “accidental” breach of a rock damn that was keeping the toxic waste from an abandoned mine from entering Cement Creek.
Cement Creek is a tributary that flows into the Animas River, which is part of the Colorado River system.
The waste that leaked into the river consisted of at least three million gallons of polluted water laced with arsenic, lead, copper, aluminum and cadmium – and possibly mercury and selenium.
Here’s Taylor’s letter …
(Click to enlarge)
(Pic via Zero Hedge)
Wow …
Not only does he predict the date of the “disturbance” and the ensuing contamination levels, he also lays out the EPA’s ultimate plan – the construction of a $100-$500 million government treatment facility.
Superfund – a.k.a. the “Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980” – is a federal program aimed at cleaning up sites contaminated with hazardous waste. Aside from freeing up federal clean-up money (for things like treatment facilities), the program imposes severe restrictions on future development in the affected areas.
A Superfund designation is also a death knell to tourism … which brings billions of dollars to Colorado’s economy each year.
Think this is black helicopter nonsense? Think again …
The subservient mainstream media – specifically left-leaning ABC News – has an astonishingly transparent article up seeking to shift the blame for the Animas River disaster from the EPA to “local authorities and mining companies (which) spent decades spurning federal cleanup help.” Specifically, Superfund help.
In fact the ABC report explicitly states that the EPA spent 25 years trying to impose a Superfund designation on the area – and that if the locals had only accepted their kind offer this disaster never would have happened.
From the report …
Asked if Superfund designation could have helped to prevent this accident, regional EPA administrator Shaun McGrath indicated it could have.
“Being listed under a national-priorities list … makes available to a clean-up effort resources under the Superfund, which are significant resources,” McGrath said. “And it does allow for potentially more extensive clean-up.”
Meanwhile from The Washington Post …
… (EPA) officials said that the toxic flood just highlights the need to deal with the rest of the state’s 22,000 abandoned mines.
Wow.
Does anybody with more than two brain cells seriously still believe this disaster was an “accident?”
The EPA – currently engaged in an effort to regulate every puddle in America – appears to have deliberately turned a small environmental problem into a full-scale environmental disaster out of spite (and a desire to spend more taxpayer money).
We can only imagine what will happen to the next state or local government which attempts to resist the EPA …
51 comments
I told you they did it on purpose!
…but Republicans accidentally started a war in Iraq.
LMAO! what is funny, I looked at my neighbors pond this morning thinking about this river. There is a lot of red dirt in SC. The pond has no toxic waste, just a pond dug into red mud, but looks very similar to picture above.
Of course, a pond isn’t a river and that one likely had some help. But…ZeroHedge?
SC Professional Engineering Exam (excerpt)–
———————————————–
9. A limestone quarry is in secondary use as a hazardous waste dump. The quarry employs 57 workers on the first shift. A toxic gas alert is sounded at one hour into the shift. How many
cans of Skoal will be consumed before the explosion?
SC Professional Engineering Exam (excerpt)–
4. A farmer’s chain saw operates at 2500 rpm. The pine tree density in a harvesting plot is 260 per acre. The trees average 1.2 feet in diameter. The harvesting plot is 1.8 acres.
How many cases of Coors Light will it take to finish the job?
Christ sake, we pollute the crap out of the Savannah River all the time.
And that’s something to be proud of??????
If we don’t buy into your conspiracy theory,we’re idiots? How’s your Ebola?
But we have to blame Obama for this somehow.
No peeing while swimming,Barack!
Three engineering graduates were debating who designed the human
body. One said, “It had to be a mechanical engineer, with all those
joints.”
The second said, “It was definitely an electrical engineer. Look at all
those thousands of electrical connections in the nervous system.”
The last one said, “Actually it was a civil engineer. Who else would run a
toxic waste pipeline through a recreational area?”
3 things civil engineers learn on their first day of class:
1. Shit stinks
2. Water runs downhill
3. Don’t chew your fingernails……….
I became acutely aware of those rules very early in my career; #3 is my own “saying”
A mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer were all given a red rubber ball
and told to find the volume.
The mathematician carefully measured the diameter and evaluated a triple
integral.
The physicist filled a beaker with water, put the ball in the water, and
measured the total displacement.
The engineer looked up the model and serial numbers in his Red-Rubber-Ball Table.
Keep my handy-dandy table booklet (circa 1976) with me at all times!!!!!
Did you ever see the no BS film of engineering students trying to get a ping-pong ball out of a 3 foot cylinder (barely larger than the diameter of the ping-pong ball) with only things in the room?
no, but sounds interesting …
Little Barry at the age of ten was kicked out of the community swimming pool for peeing in the pool. “But everyone does it,” he complained. “But,” says the lifeguard, “not from the diving board!”
Well, my toenail fungus is acting up again and I know without a doubt that it is “Obammer’s” fault fer sure!!!!
The best way to stop environmental disasters like this is to not do something that leaves a shitload of toxic waste lying around just waiting for the slightest catastrophe to cause it to get dumped into the environment. You can’t spill the milk if there isn’t any to spill.
The free market is the best way to assure things like this will not happen. Unregulated mining companies would never allow something like this to happen.
Yes, boss told us he cares about our safety, wants to pay us more than enough to live comfortably, and doesn’t want us polluting the place up, because all that results in extreme profit margins. No business cuts corners!
Speaking of profit margins and BP’s stellar preventive maintenance history as a reflection of cutting corners to maintain the profit margin…………
To quote the BP engineer who radioed shortly before he died on the offshore oil rig:
*****”I told you SOB’s this was going to happen” (no BS words to that effect)********
Yeah and give em a tax cut while you’re at it so they can “create” some jobs.
Ok, my tin foil hat is not in place. So how did the EPA get the mining company to put the toxic waste there. Were they bribed?
God put them there. The toxic wastes are all natural elements of the earth. As Branton said, they are all valuable elements.They were safe until the EPA put them in the river. But l’m not ready to believe they did it on purpose, YET.
Virtually all elements are natural. Just like the coal ash sludge that Duke Power dumped in NC, and the arsenic sludge they are using to mine gold in Lancaster, SC. That means nothing. God certainly did not put them where they are, in the combination they are in and in a form capable of running into a local water supply. Sounds like Mining Company Speak to me. Don’t blame us.
Sadly, “Bible Thumper” is incapable of common sense and even a smattering of science and engineering when it comes to matters such as this.
The Good Lord gave us a brain to reason with and work out solutions to problems.
If people like “Bible Thumper” had his/her way, we would still think that because polio was naturally occurring there is nothing we can do about it.
We are on our way to library to pick you up for your mental health appointment at social services.
You haven’t been playing ‘glass bottom boat’ with the children again, have you?
Heavy metals naturally occurring – without a doubt they are.
The problem is the heavy metals are CONCENTRATED in tailings ponds and other containment structures which are FUCKING man made as part of the mining process.
I’ve made good money contracting at Superfund sites and not a DAMN one of them was in any shape or form “caused” by the EPA. they became Superfund sites because of owners either being ignorant of the law, disregarding the law, or dumping shit for years prior to environmental regulations, in any case the parties are responsible – like the old saying goes: “you break it, you pay for it”.
That’s why so many proposed industrial/commercial sites have an environmental audit/site inspection prior to getting a loan (insurance companies/banks require one prior to loan approval).
And yes, mine owners who didn’t want the the FUCKING government bothering them can definitely be part of the problem.
Just ask the poor people of Lockhart, SC how a business can just vanish leaving the residents (mostly elderly or low income) holding the bag and putting up with a bunch of shit for months on end.
Who’s going to clean up Yellowstone?
http://toxics.usgs.gov/highlights/yellowstone_mercury.html
I’m sure the “Yellowstonians” can handle it because it sure as hell ain’t gonna be you now is it????
“God put them there.”
What, the mines? Wow, did he send Jesus with a pickaxe, a mining cart, and a hard hat with a light on it to do it?
Will the EPA fine themselves?
Looks like Trump took a dip there.
So did Hillary, but fits don’t choose to write about Trump.
That orange water looks like the same stuff in Lake Hartwell.
Agreed; however, other than the PCBs in Lake Hartwell, most of the mud is really mud. There are boatloads(no pun intended) of stupid people who don’t pay attention to the signs (and don’t have any common sense) to know that you don’t venture into shallow water with your motor running, especially when there hasn’t been enough rain to keep the water at a normal level. No rain……no water.
It is conceivable to me that the EPA would do something like this. Not convinced at this point, but the “environment” and “global warming” are the Holy Grails of the left on trying to control the masses. Through government regulations and government spending in these two areas they can gain control of the economy and hence, control of our lives. In these days and times, it works better than Gestapo-type civil control and concentration camps.
Hyperbole was intended, but false motives can bring about an uncertain reality.
Had these assholes in government regulatory agencies been around at the beginning of the Dark Ages, civilization would not have been able to progress past living in stick huts and shitting in the woods.
Obama should never slam BP again
To copy from an earlier post:
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Observant • a day ago
It’s not like one has to be a genius to know to build a set or retention pools below ANY mine that is to be disturbed. Nearly all unused mines fill with water. Even (while not a true mine) Stumphouse Tunnel used to have (and may still – I haven’t been there in 40+ years) water up to your armpits (and deeper, if you were foolish enough to go further in) and I don’t know if there have been toxic minerals (like maybe even some of the Uranium Salts) leached out of the native graiteby the natural water flow.
Nothing new for out in Colorado, either. See about the Argo Tunnel near Leadville, CO: “Although no longer actively used, the Argo Tunnel continued to drain acid water from the mines, and was recognized as a major continuing source of dissolved metals in Clear Creek. In May 1980, a surge of water flowed from the mine and turned the water in Clear Creek orange for some distance downstream. The temporary large increase in flow was attributed to a roof collapse somewhere within the tunnel damming a large volume of water behind it, then failing suddenly.” (via Wikimedia)
The saddest part is that the BEAUTIFULLY CLEAR Animas River is now the color of diarrhea. I was out there for more than a week last year, and it probably would have been safe to drink untreated (although I no longer do that). It will be several years before even the orange silt clears.
Such a pity that the “professionals” at EPA are such dumbasses.
To borrow another blogger’s favorite quote: “Sic semper tyrannis”.
Some folks will let the government destroy the country before they believe anything. After the IRS,Fast & Furious,Benghazi Clinton Emails and now the EPA Americans really prove their stupidity.
Obama’s ATF: Too Busy Gun Smuggling to Arrest Criminals?
Indictment in Border Agent Murder Turns up the Heat on Holder
The attorney general must answer two simple questions truthfully — what did you know, and when did you know it?A 14-count federal indictment has been leveled against an illegal alien and “other unnamed fugitives” in the Dec. 14, 2010 murder of Border.
D.C. says more than 300 city workers involved in unemployment scandal.
Your government is the most corrupt organization in America,America and you are to dumb to recognize it!
“Never assume malice when simple stupidity will suffice.”
This is America. Almost no one would care all that much if those same toxics were in the spilled water but the water was sparkling clear.
“Looks OK to me. Them goofy birdwatching environmentalists are always complaining about some little thing or the other.” — typical goober
There are new details on the death of Clemson fraternity pledge, Tucker Hipps.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/12/us/tucker-hipps-death/
E.P.A. – Environmental Polluters of America
Closer to home,the Edisto River is on National Geographic’s endangered rivers list.The Saluda River has been on that list,too.
What could be more conservative than conservation?
SC’s going to drain the Edisto instead. But don’t worry, it will all be legally permitted pumping and DHEC’s on the environmental watch. What could be wrong?
Ask Richard Nixon,a real republican;he created the EPA
FITS or anyone, please post a link to the entire edition of the July 30, 2015 The Silverton (Colorado) Standard …..
Try this. May or may not work. It’s by the article.
http://www.silvertonstandard.com/news.php?catNum=2
Been there…….I want to see the 30 Jul edition……looks like things are running 4-5 months behind in previous editions! Slightly easy way to just make up a story whenever you want to?
They will apparently sell you a subscription that will include back issues. Struggling print newsies like The State.