The notion that the Animas River disaster was an "accident" gets less and less credible with each passing day:
U.S. officials knew of the potential for a catastrophic "blowout" of poisonous wastewater from an inactive gold mine, yet appeared to have only a cursory plan to deal with such an event when a government cleanup team triggered a 3.8-million-gallon spill, according to internal documents released by the Environmental Protection Agency.
EPA released the documents following weeks of prodding from the Associated Press and other media organizations.....
Among the documents is a June 2014 work order for a planned cleanup that noted that the old mine had not been accessible since 1995, when the entrance partially collapsed. The plan appears to have been produced by Environmental Restoration, a private contractor working for EPA.
“This condition has likely caused impounding of water behind the collapse,” the report says. “In addition, other collapses within the workings may have occurred creating additional water impounding conditions. Conditions may exist that could result in a blowout of the blockages and cause a release of large volumes of contaminated mine waters and sediment from inside the mine, which contain concentrated heavy metals.”
So EPA knew damn and very well that this blowout and a heavy-metal tsunami could ensue, but took no more than casual precautions to prevent it. A "devil may care" attitude that one would not logically expect of employees of a(n unconstitutional) federal agency whose ostensible mission is environmental protection. As if in their arrogance, they believed that it is only "polluters" and miners and, well, capitalists who have "accidents" that befoul the water and the air, and such thing could never happen to them.
And perhaps the cursory "action plan" was merely due diligence ass-covering, a PR fig leaf to throw investigators off the scent of this "blowout" being a deliberate and calculated act to expand EPA's "portfolio". Or "rainmaking," as they call it in the ambulance-chasing profession.
Either way, even at best this incident redefines the term "gross negligence". Heads ought to role, and not just at the "minion" level, and EPA's funding should be held hostage at minimum until they start "enhancing their transparency" - not off to a good start given that EPA kept quiet about the huge spill for the first twenty-four hours.
Alas, that trend is not mitigating, but worsening:
Much of the text in the documents released Friday was redacted by EPA officials. Among the items blacked out is the line in a 2013 safety plan for the Gold King job that specifies whether workers were required to have phones that could work at the remote site, which is more than 11,000 feet up a mountain. [emphasis added]
Textbook, trademark imperious Obama Regime opacity. Everything they do they consider to be on a "need to know" basis, and We the People and our elected representatives are never, EVER on that list.
Memo to Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader McConnell: I know you guys' plates were full years ago, but can you move this outrage up the list? As I asked the other day, what good is an "Environmental Protection Agency" that not only doesn't protect the environment, but either doesn't give a damn about it or is actively trying to destroy it? Time to zero out its funding until they start coming up with truthful answers. You'll never have a better PR opportunity.
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