Congress Slams EPA For Wastewater Spill

After EPA staff and contractors spilled 3 million gallons of toxic mining wastewater into a river system in Colorado last month, the agency is facing intense criticism on Capitol Hill.

Congressional Republicans are getting in line to chastise the EPA by means of a series of public meetings.

In the first panel hearing on the issue, Texas Rep. Lamar Smith, the top Republican on the House Science Committee, called the spill that has affected Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and the Navajo Nation an “inexcusable” event.

"The story of the mine disaster would be much different if this spill had been caused by a private company," Smith said, per The Salt Lake Tribune.

"I suspect there would be calls from this administration and others for the executives of the company to resign," Smith added. "There would be demands that all documents be posted immediately online. Massive fines would be imposed."

“The EPA’s negligence is especially inexcusable since there were known procedures that could have prevented the river’s pollution,” Smith said in written remarks.

As the agency faces political heat over the spill, the circumstances come at a challenging moment for the Obama administration.

“The spill came at an extremely important time for the administration, a mere two days after President Obama rolled out the first carbon dioxide limits for power plants, the key piece of his second-term push against climate change,” The Hill reported.

“The timing has not been lost on Republicans, who are using the incident to embarrass the EPA and prove their long-held belief that the agency is not equipped to take on the wide-ranging regulatory agenda it set out,” the report continued.

A government contractor appears to be responsible for the spill, according to The Wall Street Journal:

Missouri-based Environmental Restoration LLC was the contractor whose work caused a mine spill in Colorado that released an estimated three million gallons of toxic sludge into a major river system, according to an Environmental Protection Agency official and government documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The EPA, which was overseeing the servicing of the mine, had previously said an unnamed outside contractor was using heavy equipment when it accidentally triggered a breach in the abandoned Gold King Mine, letting out wastewater that had built up inside it.

The top water pollution regulator in the U.S. claimed responsibility for sending a flood of toxic waste into the Colorado Animas River last month.

On August 5, the Animas became ”grievously polluted with toxic water spilled from one of the many abandoned mines that pockmark the region — a spill for which the EPA has claimed responsibility, saying it accidentally breached a store of chemical-laced water,” The New York Times reported.

Additional coverage of the EPA’s Colorado Animas River incident can be found by visiting Water Online’s Source Water Contamination Solutions Center.