Pollution in the United States

Massive Mine Waste Spill Reaches New Mexico

Eco Watch,

10 August, 2015

Just days after workers with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) accidentally spilled a million gallons of toxic mine waste into a Colorado waterway, the free-flowing slщudge that turned portions of the state’s Animas River orange reached New Mexico, where health and wildlife officials say they were not alerted to any impending contamination.

The Animas River in Colorado turned orange with toxins after a spill sent a million gallons of mine waste into a waterway last week. Photo credit: La Plata County Emergency Management

As the cities of Aztec and Bloomfield scrambled to cut off the river’s access to water treatment plants, they criticized the EPA for what they said was a lackluster effort in providing warnings or answers about the spill. The contaminants seeping into the river—at a rate of 548 gallons per minute—include arsenic, copper, zinc, lead, aluminum and cadmium.

The Animas flows into the San Juan River in New Mexico, which in turn joins the Colorado River in Utah’s Lake Powell.

Workers unleashed the waste while using heavy machinery to investigate toxic materials at Colorado’s non-functioning Gold King Mine. But the accident, while “unexpected” by EPA’s admission, is a reminder that defunct mines still heavy with contaminates exist throughout the West.

The Associated Press writes:

Until the late 1970s there were no regulations on mining in most of the region, meaning anyone could dig a hole where they liked and search for gold, silver, copper or zinc. Abandoned mines fill up with groundwater and snowmelt that becomes tainted with acids and heavy metals from mining veins which can trickle into the region’s waterways. Experts estimate there are 55,000 such abandoned mines from Colorado to Idaho to California and federal and state authorities have struggled to clean them for decades. The federal government says 40 percent of the headwaters of Western waterways have been contaminated from mine runoff.

There are a number of factors which contribute to the abandonment of such sites. One is cost, as cleaning up toxic materials can be an expensive endeavor. But more complex is the legal liability involved. According to the Clean Water Act, anyone who “[d]ischarges a pollutant from a point source into a water of the U.S.” without a permit can be prosecuted for a federal crime, even if they were trying to clean up pollution. That has prevented green groups from engaging in those cleanup efforts—particularly as an ongoing push for a “Good Samaritan” exception to the law has gone ignored by the federal government, AP writes.

“There’s still a whole generation of abandoned mines that needs to be dealt with,” Steve Kandell of Trout Unlimited, one of the organizations backing the “Good Samaritan” bill, told the AP.

Yet that ongoing issue is exactly what the EPA crew had been attempting to address last week—and the reason it won’t accept help. The Denver Post reports:

Silverton and San Juan County officials have resisted efforts to launch a full-scale federal “Superfund” cleanup to address this problem due to fears of a stigma that could hurt the tourism they count on for business.

“These are historic abandoned mines that have had acid drainage for decades. That is the very reason why we were up there,” EPA regional chief McGrath said. “We were trying to reach that drainage coming off the Gold King Mine. They were trying to put in a treatment system.

“We have been in conversations with the town of Silverton … and the state of Colorado about listing this area under Superfund. And if it is listed then, of course, removal (of waste) is part of Superfund that would allow us to take action up there. We have not been able to move this area to a listing under the Superfund.”

In the meantime, cities have closed access of the river to recreational and agricultural users, while health and wildlife officials conduct additional tests to determine the potential impacts of the spill. Long-term exposure to arsenic and lead can be fatal to humans.

Recent heavy rains have also raised the prospect that some of the waste which washed up onshore as it flowed down the Animas last week would rinse back out into the river, causing additional damage.

“It’s hard to know what is going to happen as more river flows join it,” EPA’s on-scene coordinator Craig Myers, in Durango, told the Post. “It is diluting. (The sludge of contaminants) is going to be settling out in place.”

La Plata county director of emergency management Butch Knowlton was more direct in his assessment. “The population that lives along this river is at the mercy of the EPA,” he said

Thousands Of Mines With Toxic Water Lie Under The West

California aquifers contaminated with billions of gallons of fracking wastewater

RT,

9 August, 2015

Industry illegally injected about 3 billion gallons of fracking wastewater into central California drinking-water and farm-irrigation aquifers, the state found after the US Environmental Protection Agency ordered a review of possible contamination.

According to documents obtained by the Center for Biological Diversity, the California State Water Resources Board found that at least nine of the 11 hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, wastewater injection sites that were shut down in July upon suspicion of contamination were in fact riddled with toxic fluids used to unleash energy reserves deep underground. The aquifers, protected by state law and the federal Safe Water Drinking Act, supply quality water in a state currently suffering unprecedented drought.

The documents also show that the Central Valley Water Board found high levels of toxic chemicals - including arsenic, thallium, and nitrates - in water-supply wells near the wastewater-disposal sites.

Arsenic is a carcinogen that weakens the immune system, and thallium is a common component in rat poison.

“Arsenic and thallium are extremely dangerous chemicals,” said Timothy Krantz, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Redlands, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.

“The fact that high concentrations are showing up in multiple water wells close to wastewater injection sites raises major concerns about the health and safety of nearby residents.”

The Center for Biological Diversity obtained a letter from the state Water Board to the USEnvironmental Protection Agency (EPA)that said the Central Valley Regional Water Board discovered the health violations. Following theJuly suspensionof the 11 injection sites, the EPA ordered a review of aquifers in the area to be completed within 60 days.

The state Water Board also said that 19 more injection wells may have also contaminated sensitive, protected aquifers, while dozens more wells have been the source of wastewater dumped into aquifers of unknown quality.

Despite these damning findings, the extent of wastewater pollution is still undetermined, as the Central Valley Water Board has thus far only tested eight water wells of the more than 100 in the area, according to the documents. Half of those tested came up positive for containing an excessive amount of toxic chemicals.

To unleash oil or natural gas, fracking requires blasting large volumes of highly pressurized water, sand, and other chemicals into layers of rock. The contents of fracking fluid include chemicals that the energy industry and many government officials will not name, yet they insist the chemicals do not endanger human health, contradictingfindingsby scientists and environmentalists. Toxic fracking wastewater is then either stored in deep underground wells, disposed of in open pits for evaporation, sprayed into waste fields, or used over again.

Fracking has been linked to groundwater contamination, an uptick in earthquakes, exacerbation of drought conditions and a host of health concerns for humans and the local environment.

A recent study by the US Drought Monitor noted that 58 percent of California is experiencing “exceptional drought,” which is the most serious category on the agency’s five-level scale. Meanwhile, a fracking job can require as much as 140,000 to 150,000 gallons of water per day, water that then cannot be consumed or used in farming operations.

The Center for Biological Diversity noted that the contamination of water sources could be much worse in another regard, as flowback water that comes from oil wells in the state can contain levels of benzene, toluene, and other toxic chemicals that are hundreds of times higher than legally allowed. Flowback fluid is then released back into wastewater storage wells. Chemicals like benzene can take years to eventually find their way to water sources.

“Clean water is one of California’s most crucial resources, and these documents make it clear that state regulators have utterly failed to protect our water from oil industry pollution,”said Hollin Kretzmann, an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity.

“Much more testing is needed to gauge the full extent of water pollution and the threat to public health. But Governor [Jerry] Brown should move quickly to halt fracking to ward off a surge in oil industry wastewater that California simply isn’t prepared to dispose of safely.”