http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/08/18/epas-gross-negligence-at-gold-king-mine-includes-disappearing-191-incident-photos-from-their-website/
EPA's gross negligence at Gold King Mine includes disappearing 191 incident photos from their website
Guest Blogger / 2 hours ago August 18, 2015
WUWT contributor Russell Cook notes:
EPA has scrubbed all 191 photos off their photo log / list view pages http://www.epaosc.org/site/image_listview.aspx?site_id=11082 . If the #1 item at this page is an accurate indicator, the scrub took place on Sunday.
I had visited that site last week when the event first happened and I wrote my first report, and I can confirm that the photos below, plus many more, are now gone.
What could have rendered all those photos, which were previously labeled “Security Level: Public“, as now not for public viewing?
Guest essay by Paul Driessen
On August 5, an Environmental Restoration company crew, supervised by US Environmental Protection Agency officials, used an excavator to dig away tons of rock and debris that were blocking the entrance portal of Colorado's Gold King Mine, which had been largely abandoned since 1923. Water had been seeping into the mine and out of its portal for decades, and the officials knew (or could and should have known) the water was acidic (pH 4.0-4.5), backed up far into the mine, and laced with heavy metals.
"But they kept digging – until the greatly weakened dam burst open, unleashing a 3-million-gallon (or more) toxic flood that soon contaminated the Animas and San Juan Rivers, all the way to Lake Powell in Utah. To compound the disaster, EPA then waited an entire day before notifying downstream mayors, health officials, families, farmers, ranchers, fishermen and kayakers that the water they were drinking, using for crops and livestock, or paddling in was contaminated by lead, cadmium, mercury and arsenic."
"Three million gallons of turmeric-orange poisonous water and sludge is enough to fill a pool the size of a football field (360Г—160 feet) seven feet deep. Backed up hundreds of feet above the portal into mine adits, stopes, rooms and other passageways that begin at 11,458 feet above sea level, the flash-flooding water had enough power to rip out a road and propel its toxic muck hundreds of miles downstream. (You can review EPA's incompetence and gross negligence in these project photos* and post-disaster images.)"
"
"Anyone who follows mining, oil spill and power plant accidents knows the EPA, Obama White House and Big Green environmentalist rhetoric: There is no safe threshold for chemicals. They are toxic and carcinogenic at parts per billion. The water will be unsafe for years or even decades. Wildlife will die. Corporate polluters are criminals and must pay huge fines. We will keep our boots on their necks."
"This time the White House was silent, and Democrats and eco-activists rushed to defend EPA and shift the blame to mining and mining companies."
MORE info at the website
Guest Blogger / 2 hours ago August 18, 2015
WUWT contributor Russell Cook notes:
EPA has scrubbed all 191 photos off their photo log / list view pages http://www.epaosc.org/site/image_listview.aspx?site_id=11082 . If the #1 item at this page is an accurate indicator, the scrub took place on Sunday.
I had visited that site last week when the event first happened and I wrote my first report, and I can confirm that the photos below, plus many more, are now gone.
What could have rendered all those photos, which were previously labeled “Security Level: Public“, as now not for public viewing?
Guest essay by Paul Driessen
On August 5, an Environmental Restoration company crew, supervised by US Environmental Protection Agency officials, used an excavator to dig away tons of rock and debris that were blocking the entrance portal of Colorado's Gold King Mine, which had been largely abandoned since 1923. Water had been seeping into the mine and out of its portal for decades, and the officials knew (or could and should have known) the water was acidic (pH 4.0-4.5), backed up far into the mine, and laced with heavy metals.
"But they kept digging – until the greatly weakened dam burst open, unleashing a 3-million-gallon (or more) toxic flood that soon contaminated the Animas and San Juan Rivers, all the way to Lake Powell in Utah. To compound the disaster, EPA then waited an entire day before notifying downstream mayors, health officials, families, farmers, ranchers, fishermen and kayakers that the water they were drinking, using for crops and livestock, or paddling in was contaminated by lead, cadmium, mercury and arsenic."
"Three million gallons of turmeric-orange poisonous water and sludge is enough to fill a pool the size of a football field (360Г—160 feet) seven feet deep. Backed up hundreds of feet above the portal into mine adits, stopes, rooms and other passageways that begin at 11,458 feet above sea level, the flash-flooding water had enough power to rip out a road and propel its toxic muck hundreds of miles downstream. (You can review EPA's incompetence and gross negligence in these project photos* and post-disaster images.)"
"
"Anyone who follows mining, oil spill and power plant accidents knows the EPA, Obama White House and Big Green environmentalist rhetoric: There is no safe threshold for chemicals. They are toxic and carcinogenic at parts per billion. The water will be unsafe for years or even decades. Wildlife will die. Corporate polluters are criminals and must pay huge fines. We will keep our boots on their necks."
"This time the White House was silent, and Democrats and eco-activists rushed to defend EPA and shift the blame to mining and mining companies."
MORE info at the website
