Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) contractors will resume “stabilization work” at Colorado’s Gold King Mine Saturday, where the agency spilled three million gallons of toxic waste into drinking water for three states last year.
The agency announced Friday that “stabilization of the mine” and “stabilization of the mine waste pile” would begin Saturday and continue through October. Such work includes installing steel bracing and removing “dry solids” from an interim treatment plant.
Environmental Restoration LLC – an EPA contractor – working at the agency’s orders breached Gold King Mine in August 2015, which unleashed a flood of mine waste containing 880,000 tons of dangerous metals like lead and arsenic. (RELATED: Gold King Mine Spill Contractor Cashed In After The Disaster)
The EPA has since proposed designating Gold King and 47 other mines as a Superfund site, which would open additional funding and property control for mine clean ups.
The EPA was repeatedly warned that a blowout was possible. Gold King Mine owner Todd Hennis tried keeping the agency out of his property for fear of an environmental disaster, but the EPA forced him to grant officials access. (RELATED: Gold King Mine Owner Fears EPA’s ‘Limitless Legal Budget’)
The spill launched numerous investigations from Congress, the media and the agency’s inspector general, but no one has been punished for the EPA-caused disaster. New Mexico is suing the EPA, Colorado and mine owners over the incident.
Daily Caller News Foundation investigations have shown that the EPA was trying to make the region a Superfund site for decades, that it intentionally breached Gold King Mine and asked it’s biased sister agency – the Department of the Interior – to investigate the spill.
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