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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[ARC]

It's just rusty water with a little zinc. A million gallons is three acres 1 foot deep in water.

I think the EPA needs to fine itself. They waited a day to inform the downstream communities.

Bad EPA - where's that dunce cap?

Heavy Pans

? ? ? And Arsenic ... And lead... And gods knows what else.

The impact of this will be enormous...
Bigger than they are letting on".

Lead levels alone are thousands of times the "safe" limits.
Arsenic levels are off the charts as well.

 

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[KevinInColorado]

It's not a Superfund site. The locals and the Governor have resisted that designation. Mineral and Concrete creeks were acidic drainages long before there was mining.

I'm guessing the EPA would stoop pretty low to get it on the funding list. Who knew it would be that low?

It's all about the money.

Heavy Pans

Excellent points. The average person doesn't realize what is naturally in some of our mountain streams. That pretty stream you are hiking beside may be so clear because the minerals in it kill all aquatic life! Often the stream names are a hint...Mineral and Concrete being good examples! It ain't "Trout Creek" for a reason folks!

 

[Nitric]

? ? ? And Arsenic ... And lead... And gods knows what else.

The impact of this will be enormous...
Bigger than they are letting on".

Lead levels alone are thousands of times the "safe" limits.
Arsenic levels are off the charts as well.

There is no doubt in my mind they already know what is in the water! I read above they were still testing? They knew what was in it years ago or they wouldn't have fooled with it to begin with. I call BS, They are just working "damage control" !They knew what was in it before it was let loose!

Oh this would have "safe" limits, but if you dumped some down your drain and someone found out it would be national news! The "safe" limits seem to change to fit the situation.

Arc1 that wasn't really directed at you, I just quoted it because it sparked some thoughts!

 

[Clay Diggins]

? ? ? And Arsenic ... And lead... And gods knows what else.

The impact of this will be enormous...
Bigger than they are letting on".

Lead levels alone are thousands of times the "safe" limits.
Arsenic levels are off the charts as well.

I've looked at the drainage water analysis before the release and the numbers weren't that high. Some of the metals were above the safe limit for rainbow trout but not for brook trout.

You can download a PDF showing the latest actual numbers HERE.

The media is not your best source for information. Drama trumps facts with the media.

They have been doing studies on these mines since the 1990's and the biggest problem is the pH of the water, which is a natural condition that may be influenced by the flooding of the mines since they plugged up the American tunnel.

Low pH, iron and arsenic are all naturally a problem in volcanic caldera drainages like the Silverton area. Most of the desert west has naturally low pH high mineral content "bad" water by eastern standards.

Heavy Pans

 

[Nitric]

I've looked at the drainage water analysis before the release and the numbers weren't that high.

The media is not your best source for information. Drama trumps facts with the media.


Heavy Pans

I guess that explains the idea of my last sentence of my last post a lot clearer! I get all twisted up when typing!

Added instead of posting again.....The media or EPA would destroy an individual or small company dumping a little acid or chemical. It would be the most horrible thing in the world! The EPA does it?, and "were still testing", they knew from the start what was in it. But what if they came out and said it wasn't all that bad? Then all the wasted time and money would be questioned all across the board.So, they can't play it off to be too safe. I wouldn't know if levels are bad or not. Just thinking about how things come out in media or are twisted.

 

[arizau]

What is not mentioned is that this could have been a life threatening incident for the workers involved.

Two of my cousins were in similar incidents one of which was lucky to survive. I think that that incident happened while BART was being constructed. An unknown aquifer was penetrated and he and several other men were swept down the tunnel by the ensuing flood. I think that there was one or more fatalities. His clothes were shredded and he was skinned from head to toe, spent several days in the hospital and was lucky to survive. The other cousin was on a crew seeking to rediscover the vein in an old mine in the Alleghaney area of CA. They were tunneling into an area that was unmapped so thought to be virgin ground. The face was drilled, a charge set and they were outside waiting for the blast and for the smoke to clear. Not too long after the blast a huge gust of wind and subsequent flood of water and equipment gushed out of the adit. As it turned out the face they had shot was just a few feet from an unknown/unmapped water filled shaft that breached and it is lucky for them that it happened the way it did. All of the men were EXPERIENCED AND SERIOUS MINERS.

The workers in Colorado should consider themselves lucky. Old underground mapping is only partly accurate and can be incomplete.

Dam the EPA! Spelling and pun intended.

 

[Nitric]

Just thinking here...Are these tunnels flooded on purpose, or just from not being in use and pumped, fill up? why are they capped? I would imagine the seepage is still going somewhere, and at some point it's a waste of time to plug them up. Your just creating a huge reservoir for a potential problem. That is still seeping through rock or cracks in rock and out anyhow. Or is that the point? To use the rock as a filter? Sry, I have a million questions on how this works, spent a few minutes online looking and don't know what subject to call it! water management?

 

[goldenIrishman]

Again the media is NOT your best source of information on this as well as many other subjects. They spin the so called facts to make them seem more interesting and thereby raise their ratings. Many outlets are controlled by people with their own agendas so to think that they are reporting unbiased facts is nothing more than a pipe dream.

Clay has been in the mining business for a long time and has sources that many of us can only dream about. In all the time I've know Clay, he has yet to give me any info that was not based in fact and verifiable from a number of independent sources. On all matters dealing with mining you can trust what he says 100%.

My girlfriend has many contacts in the affected area as she was a teacher on the Navajo Reservation and the story they're telling us is that the EPA is in MAJOR damage control mode. None of us here can say with any certainty what the EPAs plans are/were in all of this. Money could be the reason but if it is, I think their plan has backfired on them and now they're going to have to eat a LOT of crow to get that "super fund" money if that is what they were after.

This little incident is going to end up costing the EPA in a lot of ways. That they didn't have people with the proper certifications in place to be doing this kind of work/study is only the start. IMHO this is going to snowball into something that is going to cause some major shakeups in personnel and procedures. If it doesn't, then the government is dumber than we already think they are.

 

[KevinInColorado]

+100 on those first two paragraphs especially... but on the whole post!

 

[kayakpat]

There are about 200 abandoned mines in the Animas watershed, the last of which closed in the early 1990s. Colorado has about 23,000 abandoned mines; the United States has an estimated 500,000. Since the 1870s, metal mining has both enriched and poisoned this region, turning the earth under portions of southwest Colorado into a maze of tunnels and leaving behind shuttered sites oozing with chemicals
The Animas region is distinct in that it has an organization called the Animas River Stakeholders Group, a loose coalition of mining companies; environmental groups; property owners; and local, state and federal government entities that have worked together since 1994 to clean up some of these sites.

In recent years, the group had identified the Gold King as one of the two most polluted mine sites, and some have pushed to figure out the sources of its chemical bleed, believing that a cleanup was necessary. The Environmental Protection Agency was moving ahead with that project — when the spill occurred.

On Aug. 5, a team from the Environmental Protection Agency was investigating an abandoned mine about 50 miles north of here. Called the Gold King, it was last active in the 1920s, but it had been leaking toxic water at a rate of 50 to 250 gallons a minute for years. It is owned by a group called the San Juan Corporation.

A call to the company’s lawyer was not returned.

The agency had planned to find the source of the leak in the hope of one day stanching it. Instead, as workers used machinery to hack at loose material, a surprise deluge of orange water ripped through, spilling into Cement Creek and flowing into the Animas. The burst did not injure workers.

It is well known fact here in the east too, that these site need constant monitoring and maintenance virtually forever at the taxpayer expense as many of these companies are long gone, accidents are bound to happen. Attack the EPA because of a mistake but without them NOBODY will do this work needed to clean the water as there is no profit in cleanups. All of us are paying for this

 

[Clay Diggins]

Just thinking here...Are these tunnels flooded on purpose, or just from not being in use and pumped, fill up? why are they capped? I would imagine the seepage is still going somewhere, and at some point it's a waste of time to plug them up. Your just creating a huge reservoir for a potential problem. That is still seeping through rock or cracks in rock and out anyhow. Or is that the point? To use the rock as a filter? Sry, I have a million questions on how this works, spent a few minutes online looking and don't know what subject to call it! water management?

The potential problem you are describing is happening now Nitric. It's just made worse by the most recent stoopid actions by the EPA.

The Sunnyside mine was the main employer in Silverton Colorado. It had been productive since 1874 and produced huge amounts of gold and many very valuable and unique mineral specimens. It sits about seven miles north of Silverton at an elevation of 12,240 ft on the shore of Lake Emma. By 1927 it was producing a record 1000 tons of ore a day and employed more than 500 people.

During the 1960's the Washington vein above the American tunnel was mined and produced incredible gold both in quantity and in beautiful crystal groups, still much sought after by mineral collectors. By the 1970's new gold and mineral deposits were found below Lake Emma.

The Gold King Mine dug the American tunnel as a haulage tunnel. It was the lowest tunnel in the mining group and was used only for haulage. In 1959 the tunnel was extended by several miles to serve as the haulage tunnel for the Sunnyside group of mines as well.

In 1978 while drilling for a new adit the wall collapsed and the whole of Lake Emma gushed out through the workings. Luckily it collapsed on a Sunday and no one was injured. Besides millions of gallons of water the new Sunnyside workings were filled with 4 million tons of mud. It took four years to clear the mine and restart the mining operation.

The American tunnel became the new exit for the drainage from the old lake crater and mountain above. From 1978 until the plugging of the American tunnel and the Sunnyside workings in 2004 it flowed 1,700 gpm and was treated with a large limestone filter basin before it entered the Animas drainage.

Since that time the water that would have flowed out of the American tunnel and been treated has backed up through the interconnected tunnel systems of the Sunnyside, Gold King and other smaller mines to the point that viable, formerly dry, mines that never contributed to acid drainage are now significant sources of acid water drainage and are unminable due to the flooding.

Little San Juan County used to have the highest per capita income in Colorado. Experienced miners made $60 - $70 dollars per hour in the local mines in the 1980s and 90's. Since the Sunnyside closed in 1991 the population of the county has sunk to less than a thousand people and they now have the lowest per capita income in the State. Efforts to reopen the Gold King and several other mines have been stopped by the rising water table created by the plugging of the American tunnel and the removal of the treatment beds to convert to grazing lands.

The people of San Juan County and Silverton would love to have those good paying jobs back. The tourist "industry" has run the County broke. Minimum wage for three months a year just doesn't cut it for raising a family at 10,000 feet in a remote mountain area.

Any miner, local or geologist that knows the area at the intersection of the calderas will tell you that it is one of the most highly mineralized areas on earth. There always was and always will be acid water and high metal content in that mineralized zone. Blaming that mineralization on miners is high on the stoopid ideas list.

The water will continue to strip the mines of their most dangerous salts and send them downstream until the American tunnel is reopened. The existing treatment system was working and didn't cost much to maintain. Since it was closed the Animas drainage has suffered from greater pollution than at any time when the mines were operating. As long as the water table rises in the mine workings there will be no mining, no money and no joy in San Juan County.

Nice job EPA!

Heavy Pans

 

[kayakpat]

It is a legacy mess for sure. August 9, 2015--Tens of thousands of mines filled with toxic water lie under the West (Associated Press) | The Water Information Program

 

[Nitric]

The potential problem you are describing is happening now Nitric. It's just made worse by the most recent stoopid actions by the EPA.

The Sunnyside mine was the main employer in Silverton Colorado. It had been productive since 1874 and produced huge amounts of gold and many very valuable and unique mineral specimens. It sits about seven miles north of Silverton at an elevation of 12,240 ft on the shore of Lake Emma. By 1927 it was producing a record 1000 tons of ore a day and employed more than 500 people.

During the 1960's the Washington vein above the American tunnel was mined and produced incredible gold both in quantity and in beautiful crystal groups, still much sought after by mineral collectors. By the 1970's new gold and mineral deposits were found below Lake Emma.

The Gold King Mine dug the American tunnel as a haulage tunnel. It was the lowest tunnel in the mining group and was used only for haulage. In 1959 the tunnel was extended by several miles to serve as the haulage tunnel for the Sunnyside group of mines as well.

In 1978 while drilling for a new adit the wall collapsed and the whole of Lake Emma gushed out through the workings. Luckily it collapsed on a Sunday and no one was injured. Besides millions of gallons of water the new Sunnyside workings were filled with 4 million tons of mud. It took four years to clear the mine and restart the mining operation.

The American tunnel became the new exit for the drainage from the old lake crater and mountain above. From 1978 until the plugging of the American tunnel and the Sunnyside workings in 2004 it flowed 1,700 gpm and was treated with a large limestone filter basin before it entered the Animas drainage.

Since that time the water that would have flowed out of the American tunnel and been treated has backed up through the interconnected tunnel systems of the Sunnyside, Gold King and other smaller mines to the point that viable, formerly dry, mines that never contributed to acid drainage are now significant sources of acid water drainage and are unminable due to the flooding.

Little San Juan County used to have the highest per capita income in Colorado. Experienced miners made $60 - $70 dollars per hour in the local mines in the 1980s and 90's. Since the Sunnyside closed in 1991 the population of the county has sunk to less than a thousand people and they now have the lowest per capita income in the State. Efforts to reopen the Gold King and several other mines have been stopped by the rising water table created by the plugging of the American tunnel and the removal of the treatment beds to convert to grazing lands.

The people of San Juan County and Silverton would love to have those good paying jobs back. The tourist "industry" has run the County broke. Minimum wage for three months a year just doesn't cut it for raising a family at 10,000 feet in a remote mountain area.

Any miner, local or geologist that knows the area at the intersection of the calderas will tell you that it is one of the most highly mineralized areas on earth. There always was and always will be acid water and high metal content in that mineralized zone. Blaming that mineralization on miners is high on the stoopid ideas list.

The water will continue to strip the mines of their most dangerous salts and send them downstream until the American tunnel is reopened. The existing treatment system was working and didn't cost much to maintain. Since it was closed the Animas drainage has suffered from greater pollution than at any time when the mines were operating. As long as the water table rises in the mine workings there will be no mining, no money and no joy in San Juan County.

Nice job EPA!

Heavy Pans

Thank you! For the time to explain All that!!!!

SO, now, if I think I understand and have that in order.(I'll read again) there MIGHT be a possibility that it was done on purpose? AND NO, I understand you don't say or elude to that anywhere in that post. I'm just thinking in all directions. How much of that land is government owned that this is draining now? It just does not sound right to me, and I'm finding it very hard to believe,a couple of people were experimenting and playing around testing, with no back up plan, just said"oops". The dikes or settling ponds in the pictures hold what? Couple 1000 gal at most? Anyhow, very interesting to me in a lot of different ways! I don't expect you to get into the debate of the above questions. Just stuff I was thinking.

Thank you again! for taking the time to explain that and the information!!!!



I'll add here............Maybe, it's because I don't understand enough. But, I'm really confused. I understand mechanical things and water is mechanical. This just sounds so crazy, almost seems purposely done. If they were treating 1700 gpm Then you almost always have to treat 1700gmp, with some fluctuation I imagine! BY plugging it? It has to go somewhere, usually it's weakest point. doesn't solve the problem your trying to solve! Even the thought of plugging would take extensive research! Maybe, decades. You would have to know where it is going to go. What it's going to effect somewhere else. Even miles and miles away! And what is going to be able to support the pressure and what isn't, even miles away depending.Where it's weak links are and what to do when or if it blows out. That much pressure will take a 3 inch hole and blow it wide open in a hurry somewhere further away. I'm mining dumb, but this whole thing just sounds all wrong. Follow the money! Who owns what? what was for sale? Who's brothers sisters cousin has interest in what? In the beginning when plugged or now! Sry, maybe I'm too dumb on the subject to understand ! I do understand mechanics and money or power of! Just stuff I was thinking about it! Hate to be the conspiracy guy! But it's the only thing that makes sense to me!

 

[Clay Diggins]

From late this June just before the bulkhead that caused this problem was installed:

Red and Bonita began draining in 2006 after the Sunnyside Gold Corp., the last major mining operation in Silverton, plugged the American Tunnel in three places. The small Red and Bonita Mine, founded in the 1800s, was never productive.

The EPA understands that this new bulkhead could have the same effect as the American Tunnel bulkheads and cause water to drain from other mines. As a result, the agency plans to monitor the Gold King number 7 level and the Mogul because they are both nearby...

“This, in a way, is as much as experiment as the American Tunnel,” said Steve Fearn, co-coordinator of the Animas River Stakeholders Group.

The region around Silverton is naturally rich in metals. So it is difficult to determine how much dissolved metal was in the creeks and rivers before it was disturbed by mining. “It’s been bleeding out of the mountains for a long time,” Steven Way, on-scene coordinator for the EPA said. The idea is to improve water quality, but it is likely impossible to eliminate the metal in the water. “There’s no expectation we’re going to see a bunch of fish swimming up Cement Creek,” he said.

Sunnyside Gold Corp. was treating about 1,600 gallons of water per minute up until the early 2000s, and it had a positive impact.

Thousands of years of mining experience to rely on and these EPA project managers (not mining engineers) decide they should "experiment" to see if blocking up more mines has the same result as every other time it's been done. I think they found their answer the hard way this week.

As Peter Butler, co-coordinator of the Animas River Stakeholder Group said in June:

A year from now, we might know a lot more than we do now

Yep - nice "experiment". Boy howdy that's good science Peter.

Heavy Pans

 

[cw0909]

if you guys think of anything me/us easterners can do to help,let us know
im emailing water people, bottle type reservoir ect., trying to fig something
out, reading around its going into the colorado river a major water supply
very concerned and saddened by this


Why Was The Environmental Protection Agency Messing With A Mine Above Silverton?
By STEPHANIE PAIGE OGBURN • AUG 6, 2015
Why Was The Environmental Protection Agency Messing With A Mine Above Silverton? | KUNC
[h=1][/h]

 

[cw0909]

forgot to say, reading around this is heading for the blame game
an mostly toward miners, they have to remember, that until after
ww2, most didnt understand the effects of polluted water land, and
when the entities involved did, it was a little to late and a lot of $$
short, to do or repair the damages, seems like its been a dont fix
it unless its totally broken like now

 

[Nitric]

forgot to say, reading around this is heading for the blame game
an mostly toward miners, they have to remember, that until after
ww2, most didnt understand the effects of polluted water land, and
when the entities involved did, it was a little to late and a lot of $$
short, to do or repair the damages, seems like its been a dont fix
it unless its totally broken like now

I agree! But there are some things that can't just be fixed by trying. Unless You really know what's going to happen. In my simple mind, the EPA caused a higher concentrated acid! They may have slowed the flow, but it had more time to brew in it's reservoir and cover more surface area of toxins.. Like taking a 6 inch block of salt, cutting a groove in it, then let water flow over it. It's going to be salty. Now take a container put a small hole in the bottom so it drips. Fill with water, put whole block in. after awhile, the flow was cut, but the concentration was higher. So, might even equal out in the end, after filters ,the thought alone could go in a million directions and possibilities of what might happen.Now, just dump it by accident..With no back up plan ....I have no clue...Just sitting thinking about it. lol Sometimes it is better left alone. Until, a known proven way is found. I don't think experimenting is always the answer when talking about something this size. It's interesting all around to me! Oh. your link above made me think of that direction, that's why i quoted you! There is so much I don't know and want to understand!

Sry to keep posting and rambling in the thread! I find the topic interesting on many levels, and No one in the house here wants to listen to my nonsense! Sry, you guys are the lucky winners!

 

[Clay Diggins]

Despite what the press is saying this spill will never make it to the Grand Canyon, the Colorado River or even to the Navajo Nation.

Navajo Lake is a 15,000 acre 25 mile long man made reservoir on the San Juan river that starts in Colorado and is dammed 35 miles above Farmington, New Mexico.

Navajo Lake was built to prevent debris flows into the lower San Juan valley and to provide the Navajo Nation, that begins 40 miles downstream from the dam, with a fair allotment of irrigation water.

The debris blocking function has worked perfectly for 43 years. Due to politics and greed the irrigation allotment not so much. Often the San Juan river is dry before it reaches the Navajo Nation. With the flow over the past few weeks you could cross the river there and not get your knees wet.

Another 360 river miles down that nearly dry San Juan River is the Colorado River. About 6 times more fresh water enters the San Juan throughout that stretch to the Colorado than all of the water that flows from the river above Navajo Lake.

From the junction of the San Juan with the Colorado River it's another 120 river miles downstream to the Grand Canyon. Along the way the river passes through Lake Powell.

Lake Powell is currently the largest reservoir in the United States in terms of capacity of water currently held, depth and surface area. 25 million acre feet, 161,000 acre surface area, an average depth of 132 feet and 2,000 miles of shoreline.

Then you get to the Grand Canyon.

The press can't count, read a map, measure, understand basic physics or liquid volume but they sure can shout THE SKY IS FALLING!!!

Heavy Pans

 

[Nitric]

I think we should plug Yellowstone and "see what happens"! I mean there is a lot of air pollution coming from that place! We have to stop it! I can't believe no one has done anything yet? Sry, I had to! Oh, But I will bet millions and millions have been done studying the pollution there!


added.......OHH MY,....I was joking when I posted above, started looking online. and yes, there all kinds of studies and theories of pollution in the park. Natural, and blaming visitors........At what point is some of this stuff a waste of money and time? What about all the buried nuclear waste? The river will clean itself over time. the water running through the mines will get weaker and weaker in toxins unless played with. The earth has a way of cleaning itself in many cases.

Don't get me wrong, there should be awareness and continued education on pollution! But the topic is so, uhhhh......influenced by many other interests.

 

[Clay Diggins]

over 3 million gallons of HIGHLY TOXIC waste...

They are instructing people to not even go near it... and especially not touch it.

300 times the level of arsenic...
3500 times the level of lead.

Equates to "dead river".
Watch the news.

Not true. The news is wrong.

The first 12 hours after the spill tests show NO LEAD anywhere in the watershed. Within 12 hours of the spill the area along Concrete Creek and the upper Animas River fell to BELOW historic norms.

Read the test reports for yourself. Download PDF.

I wouldn't swim in it because the low pH in that portion of the drainage will dry out and irritate your skin. The low pH is typical of highly mineralized areas that have never been mined.

Heavy Pans