BP had to cough up $18.7B for the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Via WISTV
Townspeople affected by the millions of gallons of waste spilled from an abandoned gold mine and now flowing through their communities demanded clarity Tuesday about any long-term threats to their water supply.
Colorado and New Mexico made disaster declarations for stretches of the Animas and San Juan rivers and the Navajo Nation declared an emergency as the waste spread more than 100 miles downstream, where it will reach Lake Powell in Utah sometime this week.
EPA workers accidentally unleashed an estimated 3 million gallons of orange-yellow waste, including high concentrations of arsenic, lead and other potentially toxic heavy metals, while inspecting the long-abandoned Gold King mine near Silverton, Colorado, on Aug. 5.
EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, who plans to tour the damage personally, said Tuesday in Washington, D.C., that she takes full responsibility for the spill, which she said “pains me to no end.” She said the agency is working around the clock to assess the environmental impact.
EPA officials said the shockingly bright plume has already dissipated and that the leading edge of the contamination cannot be seen in the downstream stretches of the San Juan River or Lake Powell.[…]
The Navajos, whose sovereign nation covers parts of New Mexico, Utah and Arizona, shut down water intake systems and stopped diverting water from the San Juan River. Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye told The Associated Press that regional EPA officials told him the cleanup could take decades.
“Decades. That is totally, completely unsettling,” Begaye said. “This is a huge issue. This river, the San Juan, is our lifeline, not only in a spiritual sense but also it’s an economic base that sustains the people that live along the river. You’re taking away the livelihood and maybe taking it away from them for decades. … That is just, to me, a disaster of a huge proportion. And we have yet to hear from the Obama administration.”
Heavy metals from Gold King and other defunct mines in Colorado have been leaching out and killing fish and other species for decades as rain and snowmelt spills from mining operations left abandoned and exposed. The EPA has considered making part of the Animas River in Colorado a Superfund site for a quarter-century.