The EPA says they finally have data declaring that the 100-mile stretch of the Animas River is back to “pre-event” conditions!

EPA Chief Gina McCarthy refused to meet with the public in Durango today, but told a handful of reporters that she can now talk about these amazing test results because they’ve had time to “quality control” the data.

What is the data? They didn’t tell us! It’s that awesome!

But even before McCarthy had her press confab, Gov. Hickenlooper was on MSNBC proclaiming that everything was back to normal, they’re just waiting on the test results.

Neither McCarthy nor Hick shared a single contaminant level of the arsenic, cadmium, iron, copper or manganese in the river.

As for the amount of waste that poured forth from the EPA’s breach, we’re just not buying the EPA’s claim that it was only three million gallons, which equals four and half Olympic-sized swimming pools. We’re hearing from the Western Slope that the spill could be as much as 100 million gallons.

Here’s what those 4.5 swimming pools of sludge looked like just after the release:

Animas pix

Here’s what those 4.5 swimming pools of sludge looked like after traveling 100 miles downriver to New Mexico.

And even though the orange clouds have dissipated in Colorado, how much of that contamination has settled on our riverbed, only to resurface during spring runoff?

We’re guessing that’s also in that quality-controlled data that wasn’t detailed today.

So anyway, the river remains closed for at least another week because yadda, yadda, blah, blah, blah, they didn’t tell us why.