It looks like the EPA is holding nearly 50 mines for ransom to get tons of money out of one company that only had two mines in the new Superfund district the federal agency has declared across Silverton.
Long story short, when the EPA declared all those mining sites as part of the Superfund, they neglected to actually evaluate more than half of those sites to determine whether they were actually polluting the area.
The EPA admits that only 19 mine sites were actually examined through the hazard ranking system, while the remaining 27 sites merely looked suspicious. The EPA just went ahead and declared all those sites without any proof, promising to investigate for actual evidence of their accusation sometime in the future.
So we should just trust them, because look where that’s gotten us so far.
This all comes to light because the Sunnyside Gold Corp., the company which the EPA is trying to put on the financial hook for cleaning up all the mines but only owns two in the district, is challenging this Superfund designation process in court.
Sunnyside Gold’s mines were two of the 27 there were never fully examined to determine if it was actually causing any pollution.
The company was right to challenge the EPA in court, but what this also calls for is congressional oversight and an immediate investigation into how the EPA claims property for superfund cleanups without actually determining whether the sites need to be cleaned up in the first place.