Before the Spill: Animas River, Durango, Colorado


Before the Spill: Animas River, Durango, Colorado
Fly fishing on the Animas River in Durango, Colorado in the fall.  

This is where the toxic spill happened in the past week; over 100 miles of river has been poisoned so far.

That toxic spill is what the "free market" looks like.  Mining companies are "free" to fail to set aside enough money to provide adequate cleanup, then go bankrupt, and the executives are free to do this knowingly and remain completely shielded from all liability. It happens over and over and over, all across the country.

So mines that were never really economically viable with cleanup costs considered are free to develop anyway, and the rest of the country is free to have the burden of the costs dumped on them (not to mention having toxic waste dumped in their water supply).

That's why there was a million gallons of toxic waste water for the EPA to (try to manage and) accidentally release in the first place... the market was free and unregulated enough to leave it there.

Such a spill could happen at a mine in Redding, California, where the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency operates a treatment plant that holds back millions of gallons of Iron Mountain Mine waste that could poison the Sacramento River, then San Francisco Bay.  It almost happened already (1997?).

And to think that some Presidential candidates want to eliminate the EPA, and simply let these toxic floods happen at random and with more frequency.  

How will the free, unregulated market work for you when your water supply is poisoned?  

#animasriver   #colorado   #durango   #freemarket   #EPA  
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Comments

  1. Colorado IS beautiful just stay way south of Denver

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  2. Picture…YES…Water…Man…Trees…Light…Colors…Contrast…) + ATMOSPHERE…COMPOSITION...

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  3. 👍 wonderful photo 🌺😊🌺😃

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  4. Incredibly beautiful photo wow!!!!!!

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  5. Woow, echt een mooi watertje voor vliegvissen!

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  6. It's sickening to see what happened to this once beautiful river.

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  7. It's already beginning to clear up due to the efforts of the EPA. The heavy rains expected today should also help.

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  8. Y'know I want to share this with correspondents who like those candidates, because it's not E.P.A. as such; it's U.N. ideology being pressed upon us through E.P.A. Yes, rivers need protection and garbage needs filtering, even if the way this administration seems to want to handle those jobs is heinous. And that's a beautiful picture.

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  9. Interesting background from roughly one month earlier, in this article:
    "Red and Bonita began draining in 2006 after the Sunnyside Gold Corp., the last major mining operation in Silverton, plugged the American Tunnel in three places. The small Red and Bonita Mine, founded in the 1800s, was never productive."

    The article describes more: a defunct mine from the 1800s starts to leak when a contemporary mine is being addressed, and a third one turns out to have a hydrologic connection and fails.  It was a complex "house of cards" long before it was dumped on the EPA.
    http://www.durangoherald.com/article/20150628/NEWS01/150629600/EPA-to-plug-Silverton-mine-soon

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  10. Awesome nice to see it so clean,hi thx for ur pics😜

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