Declaring the Silverton area one of the 10 worst disasters they caused STRIKE they will talk about cleaning up over the next few decades, the EPA has announced with great fanfare their Gold King Mine failure has made their own Superfund cleanup list.
“Listing the Bonita Peak Mining District on the National Priorities List is an important step that enables EPA to secure the necessary resources to investigate and address contamination concerns of San Juan and La Plata Counties, as well as other downstream communities in New Mexico, Utah, and the Navajo Nation,” EPA regional administrator Shaun McGrath said in a prepared statement.
Translation: We don’t have any money to actually do anything, but this gives us a great weapon with which to beat up Republicans for not giving us any money to cause further damage to the economy.
The district consists of 35 dormant mines, seven tunnels, four heaps of dog poo, a couple of sticks and three million seasonal mud puddles.
State officials claim to love the announcement too, and pledged to continue working closely with the EPA, except when the feds cause yet another spill, in which case the state had nothing to do with it, and in fact, have never even heard of the EPA.
Officials have pledged yet again to keep us all informed, except when they cause another spill like they did last month, and neglected to inform the public. Again.
Interestingly, no one is putting themselves out there as a laughing stock by giving us any sort of timetable on exactly how long this cleanup is expected to take.
Hopefully, we’ll be able to nail that down in our 20th anniversary special report titled “Are They Done, yet?”