Community Chat

[Kachina624]

The Enviromental Protection Agency was high in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado this week doing clean-up of a retention pond at the Gold King Mine, which operated off & on since the 1860's.

Something went wrong and they accidentally released one million gallons of waste into the Animas River.  Now a river of opaque orange-yellow sludge containing heavy metals, cadmium and arsenic has reached Durango, Co., and Farmigton, NM.  They are advising people to stay far away from it.

The Animas River empties into the San Juan River which empties into the Colorado River and will go to the irrigators in the San Joaquin Valley and your dinner plate.  They haven't mentioned how dangerous it is by the time it terminates.  In fact, there's been very little mention of it outside of Colorado and New Mexico.  I heard one brief mention this morning on the Saturday edition of GMA.

Just thought maybe you'd want to know before you hit the salad bar again, and don't depend on San Joaquin kale to keep you healthy.

[Puzzle Piece]

Thanks for the info.  Very interesting and will look forward to seeing how this incident will be explained away.

[Q4u]

This is more than a mistake, this is catastrophic and the EPA is responsible and needs to get ahead of this thing.  Like always, the public is really never informed of these incidents like they should be.  More than disappointed in the bumbling of yet another agency.... 

[YorkieonmyPillow]

"Accidentally?"

  A MILLION gallons? That's no accident.

[newziesuzie]

This is HORRIBLE.

I disagree that it's not on the news though 

we heard about it on our NPR station 

and CNN and I just googled it and got 

almost 1,000 articles from all over the 

place not just local to the area.  I hope 

everybody gets their news from a lot of sources.

So anyway I agree what happens next is what we're 

all watching for.  What a disaster.

😔

[suzyQ3]

---

@YorkieonmyPillow wrote:

"Accidentally?"

  A MILLION gallons? That's no accident.

---

 Oh, no. That's awful. Where did you hear that this was intentionally caused? And can you let us know who's behind this disaster? So scary.

[Kachina624]

Here's what it looks like.  I don't know who these idiots are, but I'd stay far away from that water.  I'm glad to hear it's hit the news wires.  I don't know that there's much that can be done about it now.  Too much water to dam up or divert.  Here's a news release from the EPA.  http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0/D6426E2EF06F547885257E9B005C66F1

[millieshops]

I saw this story on the national news last night, so if we weren't supposed to know, it's too late  ---at least for those of us who still get our news the old-fashioned way.

And whatever station I was tuned to included not only the sensational details, but an interview with a non-government expert who explained his idea of how to deal with the problem.  I felt just a bit better after I listened to him, but the gyge yellow strip if river certainly looked repugnant and I'm glad I wasn't planning to be in the arfea any time soon.

[foundinlv]

Makes me very angry.  Cracks open another bottle of Fiji Water  

[luv-the-Q]

The EPA and FDA are jokes.  You cannot trust the government.  They are in the business of creating jobs for themselves.