Animas River, Colorado - HUGE Environmental Disaster!!!

[jcazgoldchaser]

If you frequent the waters of the Animas, an EPA accident has released 1 million gallons of mining waste into the waterway.
Animas River fouled by 1 million gallons of contaminated mine water - The Denver Post

The La Plata County Sheriff's Office has closed the river from the San Juan County line – including Durango – to New Mexico. Authorities say they will re-evaluate the closure once the EPA tests are confirmed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/08/us/wastewater-spill-in-colorado-turns-a-river-yellow.html?_r=0
The EPA spilled 1 million gallons of waste water - Business Insider

Be safe out there!!

 

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[cw0909]

Clay Diggins, what are you thinking? can the waterways absorb and disperse
the toxins without causing long term effects on the animals and plant life of the
waterways, where the toxins will travel. im really trying to understand this event
as it seems a really big deal/prob to me

 

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[cw0909]

not sure of difs in reports/tests
http://epaosc.org/sites/11082/files/PreliminaryData_08092015.pdf

 

[Clay Diggins]

Clay Diggins, what are you thinking? can the waterways absorb and disperse
the toxins without causing long term effects on the animals and plant life of the
waterways, where the toxins will travel. im really trying to understand this event
as it seems a really big deal/prob to me

The Colorado Dept of Fish and Game is monitoring the effect on fish and wildlife. They have been using caged fish to gauge the impact. As of this afternoon they announced there would be minimal effect on fish and wildlife.

Beyond that I've seen no reports on animals. Plant life in the southwestern streams are seasonally, and during rain events, already subjected to these pH and mineral levels. I doubt there will be any short term effect on plant life but that's just a guess at this point.

Heavy Pans

 

[Clay Diggins]

not sure of difs in reports/tests
http://epaosc.org/sites/11082/files/PreliminaryData_08092015.pdf

I don't see any differences?

You do realize these reports show parts per billion (ug/L)? Move the decimal point three places to the left to get standard parts per million. The numbers with a < in front of them are below the testing tolerance. Those numbers might as well be zero.

These are mostly preliminary reports. The final numbers will probably be a lot lower for the metals because the solid particles will be filtered out to obtain the dissolved metal loads. That is what is being tested because particulate metals don't actually contribute to any pollution or "poisoning" effect. Only the dissolved metals can be absorbed by living things.

When you compare these numbers to the baselines for the area you will see that beyond a few minutes of spike at the site they are close to normal for the area.

Heavy Pans

 

[cw0909]

ya i was just reading and vid here, JMO, i think its going to bad in the long term
Animas mine disaster arsenic, cadmium, lead broke water limits - The Denver Post

 

[cw0909]

Clay time will tell, and your confidence in your knowledge is reassuring
i guess i just dont want this to turn into a we need big $$$$$ to fix, and
dont get the fix, its late early day tomorrow guess i will check on it then
thank you for talking about it with me

 

[Bonaro]

Sad event, Everybody ready to jump on the EPA because while working on a Hundred year old mine, that like many mines, they have to be monitored and maintained forever to keep contaminates from leaching out of mines. We had this problem in the east with orange rivers that were left for us taxpayers to clean up and maintain and monitor. We have much cleaner water thanks to the EPA, it is just a familar problem with mining.

Dang right it's time to jump on the EPA.. because they are directly responsible for this spill and had no plan to deal with it once it happened...completely irresponsible. They are in complete hypocrisy of their purpose. If any other person or company was doing this work the EPA would have required a plan of operation, reclamation bonds and a long list of safeguards in case something just like this happened. Monitoring and maintaining forever is required mainly to keep the EPA busy collection fees for the same.
What happened here was a organization staffed by idealistic zealots with no practical mining knowledge decided it would be fun to hop on an excavator and save the planet.. Yep, lets just wiggle these handles for a while and soon it will be nothing but rainbows and unicorns... Doesnt work that way.
The EPA once had a useful purpose but now, like the BLM, they have outgrown that and become way too powerful. They need to be scaled way back

 

[Clay Diggins]

LEAD

The EPA limit in drinking water (MCL) is 15 ppm. The highest lead spike was 7.5 ppm. That equates to the lead limit for facial cosmetics in California. The leaves in your yard commonly have higher lead values than that.

Notice the "D" designation on those lead readings? That indicates the value was derived from a dilute sample and the numbers are expected to vary considerably from the actual concentrations. The lead values with a "U" are below the threshold for testing and may as well be zero. The lead samples with a "J" indicate that the value was estimated because the actual value was too low to measure within standards.

Except during a few minutes of spike the lead levels are essentially zero. At the highest measured spike values the lead never exceeded any known standards for long term skin exposure or drinking water. Admittedly the numbers above zero are defined as unreliable according to the classification but I'd bet the actual numbers will be lower.
_____________________________________________
CADMIUM

The EPA limit for Cadmium in drinking water (MCL) is 5 ppm. The highest firm numbers in the test were spikes of .03 ppm The higher numbers at one location were all dilute samples and can't be relied on (see below). Cadmium metal is not soluble in water but in solution with acids it can recombine with calcium and other more reactive metals to form metallic salts. As such these preliminary numbers will almost certainly be much lower after filtration and retesting.
_____________________________________________
ARSENIC

The EPA limit for Arsenic in drinking water (MCL) is 10 ppb (parts per billion). The tests done show no detectable arsenic in any but one location.

The consistently abnormally high D dilute samples from this one location are unbelievable. That single location showed extremely high levels on all tests but the results from there are very suspect. Typically the results were on the order 3,000 to 10,000 times higher than the next highest tests. In any testing regime these results would be discarded as unusable. When no other location shows any arsenic it's not possible for this one location to show such high numbers.

Perhaps those are the numbers the press is relying on?

Heavy Pans

 

[Nitric]

Clay Diggins Thanks for another lessen!

I was trying to get the files open and I have to straighten my computer out to open them. I probably wouldn't have known how to read them anyhow. But I'm still working on opening the files!

 

[2cmorau]

PHOTOS: Animas River flooded with contaminated mine water

can't be any fish in this river, if this mine waste is so toxic, they be floating
since the periotic table of elements is in this area for the most part, why are humans walking this planet, the greenies claim all are toxic

and the leftwingbats environmentals claim the plume behind our dredges kills fish ironic

 

[timberjack]

Great, great thread, thanks for the no hype,,brass tacks update

 

[GoldpannerDave]

sounds to me like a few people need to be promoted to a place where they can do no harm

Yes, "promoted" to prison, like the rest of us would have been had we been doing such stuff and polluted a river like they did.

 

[nh.nugget]

Are those test results from the gov. or an independent lab. I saw it this morning on our local NH. news looks worse to me than what the gov. says. what about the sediments ? Gee I wonder what would happen if Jon q Public did something this irresponsible? I think I could see someone hanging by their buster browns!

 

[Adventure_Time]

Are those test results from the gov. or an independent lab. I saw it this morning on our local NH. news looks worse to me than what the gov. says. what about the sediments ? Gee I wonder what would happen if Jon q Public did something this irresponsible? I think I could see someone hanging by their buster browns!

Thought crossed my mind too... somehow I doubt EPA's publicists would allow unfavorable test results to hit national media if they could help it. I'd be more concerned about any bacterial contaminants myself, unless the water was sterile... which means it has toxicity. I mean why spend so much money keeping it locked away forever otherwise? Unless it's just to give the EPA a credible reason for keeping them funded. Either way it's bad for the EPA however you want to look at it. Watch the EPA will get asked hard questions and their response will be to point fingers at mining.

1)EPA is doing its best to mediate the perceived severity of this event

or

2)EPA has exposed itself as a useless tax dollar vacuum

So which is it? (that said I've emailed my senators requesting EPA to be dismantled as a useless tax dollar sink)

 

[nh.nugget]

I say useless tax dollar vacuum, At least in my state. I had to deal with them with my body shop.

 

[Nitric]

I say useless tax dollar vacuum, At least in my state. I had to deal with them with my body shop.

The past 10 years have forced a lot of small guys(meaning individual owned) out in Ohio too. I won't ramble into details, you already know! It's just crazy!

 

[Cassews]

Last news report I saw said that the State of New Mexico will be suing the EPA for damages. The contamination is supposed to be hitting Lake Powell at about 5 A.M. on Monday morning. The EPA has been downplaying this right from the start so you know it's going to be bad for them in so many ways it isn't funny. We can only hope at this point that it will shine a big spotlight on agencies overstepping their authority and causing more harm.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Last night on the news Gov John Hickenlooper is also going to sue the EPA joining with New Mexico. Sad but hey gotta do what we gotta do

 

[etex]

Obama is in Martha Vineyard on vacation, can't bother with this can he

 

[Clay Diggins]

The three cages of test fish in the Animas River survived fine.

Heavy Fish Pans

 

[IMPDLN]

Clay, I must say again, great research. You bring a lot of usable info to this discussion.

So what I get from this is that the whole situation goes much farther back in time than the current issue. This mess all started when whomever thought they could re-engineer what the old timers put in place to deal with the mine water, which was the limestone beds. If they did anything, they should have just enhanced those beds so they could have done a better job, no more. When they started putting plugs into the system they just created a toxic reservoir inside the mountain. Like as if they didn't see the water it would just go away. You can't fix stupid.

So the question is what will the current day idiot engineers think they can do to fix this way bigger problem. Will they realize that they need to go back to square one and restore the limestone beds, only better, and find a way to slowly release the pressure to drain the reservoir in a controlled environmentally sound way or will they think they can just install more plugs into the system and continue to make a bad situation even worse again and again.

With all our current technology and computers doing the thinking my bet is they will continue to make the wrong choice. This is a major problem with computer modeling and engineering. The software used is only as good as the information installed into the system. We see engineering mistakes made all the time with new roads and bridges that are not built properly and fail in short order because of flawed computer modeling. This problem with computers will only get worse as time goes because the software is usually designed by people that have no knowledge of the field for which the software is designed.

The old timers did a better job of engineering because they did the math manually. They created scenarios and tested different theories and compiled historical data and actually spent time figuring things out. They did surveys and tests and used their heads. These days we just cram a bunch of info into some computer software and all it takes is a small error in the process to screw up the result, and nobody takes the time to recheck the data manually, with brain power.

I must also agree with Clay that the PH is likely the biggest problem at least with the initial surge of this water. Fish are known to handle metal concentrations pretty well, but extreme changes in PH in a short period of time will shock fish and often kill them. Depending on how the mine water mixes with the normal river flows, the fish might be able to find areas where the 2 flows don't mix well and create safe zones that they can congregate in until the mine water passes. This of course is speaking of the short term effect. Fish will absorb minerals like mercury over time because of what they eat, mainly the insects. So over the long term impact the detriment to the resource could very well come down to how the other invertebrates are affected by the minerals which are deposited along the bottom of the stream course if they are precipitated out of the mine water. If large concentrations of minerals like lead are deposited along the river course and over time as the insects eat decaying matter and other insects and everything travels up the food chain, the effects could be very long term eventually making the fish dangerous to eat in any quantity.

Bottom line is there is no easy solution to this problem and only time will tell what the severity and long term effects will be. However the fact remains that man really knows how to screw things up and the EPA had a big hand in making a bad situation a really big disaster which in my opinion will likely become a long term problem as a result of a short term error. Dennis