Good News: EPA Causes Another Spill

Because they care or something

An Environmental Protection Agency crew working at the Standard Mine above Crested Butte triggered a wastewater spill into a creek that flows into the town water supply — a small-scale repeat of the Gold King incident this year.

Only an estimated 2,000 gallons spilled Tuesday, amid efforts to open a collapsed portal. The impact on town water is expected to be minimal.

Critics pounced.

U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton said the spill — while not a disaster like the EPA-triggered 3 million-gallon Gold King deluge that turned the Animas River mustard-yellow — raises questions about EPA procedures.

“They told us things were going to be different. Now we have a spill. … We’ve apparently got a real challenge with the EPA, not only with notification but their accountability and their ability to adequately execute these types of cleanup projects,” Tipton said. “They’ve got resources. They’re the ones in charge of the program. And they’ve had two spills in my district alone. Is there a better way to approach this?”

Had the mining company done this, they’d be fined out the Ying yang.

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11 Responses to “Good News: EPA Causes Another Spill”

  1. drowningpuppies says:

    Yeah, the EPA is looking out for the people…

    The spill happened at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, and the EPA said it immediately informed public works officials. Residents weren’t notified. Crested Butte Mayor Aaron Huckstep said he wasn’t notified until Thursday.

    And CO2 is a pollutant.

  2. john says:

    Drowning puppies would of course prefer the EPA to be disbanded and just wait for the mining company that created the problem to deal with it

  3. Jeffery says:

    And CO2 is a pollutant.

    The only true thing sp has typed in a year.

  4. drowningpuppies says:

    You guys sucking on the same bong this morning?

  5. Jeffery says:

    The Repubs hate the EPA regardless. An EPA mishap is a celebratory event with the American Right.

    The Standard Mine, five miles west of Crested Butte and abandoned, has been designated an environmental disaster since 2005 and targeted for a superfund cleanup. It is one of an estimated 230 inactive mines in Colorado that state officials know to be leaking toxic heavy metals into headwaters of the nation’s rivers.

    So who abandoned these 230 mines without cleaning them up? Why is it the responsibility of the US taxpayers and not the corporations who made the mess? It’s because our conservative politicians love corporations at the expense of workers, that’s why. Why do conservatives hate the EPA? Because they stand in the way of corporations taking dumps all over the citizenry.

    Tip o’ the hat to Colonel Nathan Jessup. Representative Tipton (R-Of Course), we live in a world that has abandoned mines, and those abandoned mines have to be cleaned up by men with tools. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Attorney General Coffman (R-Of Course)? The EPA has a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Crested Butte, and you curse the EPA. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what the EPA knows. That Crested Butte’s pollution, while tragic, probably saved lives. And the EPA’s existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at Tea Parties, you want us cleaning up corporations’ messes, you need us cleaning up corporations’ messes. We use words like clean air, clean water and carbon pollution. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. We have neither the time nor the inclination to explain ourselves to a politician who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very clean air and clean water we provide, and then questions the manner in which we provide it. We would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, we suggest you pick up a mop and stand a post. Either way, we don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled to.

  6. drowningpuppies says:

    Environmental
    Pollution
    Agency

  7. Dana says:

    Carbon dioxide is a pollutant? It’s a naturally occurring atmospheric gas!

    All animals exhale CO2, and people are trying to say that a natural function of life pollutes?

  8. david7134 says:

    Jeff,
    It is beyond apparent that the EPA is a job killer. Yes, we need environmental policy, but the EPA has set government stupidity at new levels. The middle class and other hardy workers are suffering with the bureaucratic non-sense that comes from the EPA. When you add this to the other agencies in the government that are no loner needed, then you find that by eliminating them we could have less regulation, but still have met our goals for reduced pollution or all the other concerns that the logically challenged have. More people would have jobs, we would reduce the size of the government and reduce government expenditure. We could have new industry and cheaper energy. All this by getting the government out of our lives. And NO, there would not be an increase in pollution.

    You pontificate about the slug in the mines and why the dirty miners left it there. My guess would be that the mines were sealed, likely in accord with government policy at the time and that seepage subsequently created a toxic mix. In other words, no one did a thing wrong. But, you are not very bright so you go on about how bad the companies were. I am sure your corporation does similar things, if you have a corporation.

    If you and John would get educated, learn some logic, find out how things work and see a professional to help with your hate and bigotry, you would have much better lives.

    By the way, I want go into the enormous number of stupid regulations from the EPA that cost us so much. You can look those up easily. Then as to CO2, it is not a pollutant. It is only casually associated with temperature. You and John can not answer simple question in quantum mechanics that would establish and relation to CO2 and heat. And correcting the CO2 is acknowledged to not be possible. Finally, the only thing that your agenda would do would be world government based on CO2 trading. We don’t need that.

  9. Jeffery says:

    Dana,

    Burning fossil fuels converts complex organic molecules into carbon dioxide. Humans have burned so much fossil fuel that the CO2 is accumulating rapidly in the atmosphere causing the Earth to warm unnaturally. So yes, CO2 is a pollutant. Let your semantic argument begin! But it’s silly.

    Copper (Cu), cobalt (Co), sulfur (S) and manganese (Mn) are all natural, and necessary for life, yet are pollutants in a lake. Oxygen (O2) is necessary for animal life, yet a 100% oxygen atmosphere would be lethal.

  10. Jeffery says:

    Dana,

    Feces is all natural, but if a flock of geese defecates in your swimming pool, clouding it, you would consider it pollution.

  11. jl says:

    J- You have no proof CO2 is causing “the earth to warm unnaturally”, as there’s no definition of “unnatural”. Plus, it stopped warming 18 years ago. And like your over-worn “rapidly warming” assertion, there’s nothing with comparable data to compare “natural” to “unnatural”. Again, whatever “unnatural” is. Same old alarmist playbook- what’s happened in the last 70 years or so never happened before because..well, just because. (don’t worry-all the data for all the other time spans of 70 years for the last 4 billion years is hiding along with the heat at the bottom of the ocean!)

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