Toxic spill
- Thread starter AJMarks
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i heard about it by pressing my ear to a sea shell, after which my toe promptly fell off.
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Here's the Washington Post, headlining the Colorado governor who drank some river water to reassure people
(Look at those guys smiling in the picture. See? All is well here!)
And here's CNN with all sorts of trenchant analysis.
A couple of days ago I went through several news sites, NY Times, CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, NBC News, Huffington Post, and Breitbart, only MSNBC and Breitbart had anything on their front page, and you still had to scroll down to see it. Doesn't mean its not on those sites, just buried way deeper than I was willing to go using only a few minutes on each page. I was doing this after about half of my friends hadn't heard of the spill. So I decided to see if I could poll a larger audience.
Sure. It looks like the yellow brick road now. Sucks. What about it? It's the trade off for our consumertastic lifestyles. Eventually the world will be an unlivable wasteland, but we'll really nifty TV's...
Interesting and not surprising. Google news has it for me on the headlines page but that may be in part because of my clicking history as I tend to notice this kind of story and open such links.
But yeah, we don't want anyone becoming irrationally upset about a little 3 million gallon toxic spill.
The EPA is halting all spent mine cleanup operations in the wake of this, I guess they are going to try to figure out how to do a better job.
One article, which I haven't seen since last night, forget where it was, listed the various heavy metals contaminating three rivers as a result of this spill. Lead, mercury, zinc are three I remember off the top.
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It was pretty prominent on the BBC News three or four days ago, which is where I first saw the story.
It's really prominent here. Was the front page of the AZ Republic Tuesday. While I grant you that these abandoned mines have been leaking stuff for decades, they need to figure out a better way of cleaning them up. One thing I haven't seen mentioned (and I may have just missed it) is why they were poking around a toxic site with a (looked like) front end loader.
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Numbers are fun.
3: Million gallons (at least) of toxic spill released into a river.
12,000: That's how many times above normal lead was detected in a recent water sample from the Animas River.
90: The most scary number. How many days of water reserves nearby communities have before they either run out of water or have to draw supply from the river.
The good news is, the EPA says the river will restore itself!
Nice to know you don't really have to worry about toxic spills, they clean up after themselves.
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I hadn't seen anything on it pass by from any mainstream news, but some of my conspiracy theorist friends have posted articles to Facebook about how the EPA planned to release the toxic water and that kind of stuff.
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It's been all over. I know it was on CNN's front page because that's where I first saw it - it was the top story, with the side-by-side pics, I think the day it happened. It was on my local news as well, and I'm across the country.
It may be that some people haven't heard about this because some people just don't look there, meaning, they stay focused on their own track and avoid disaster news.
Ohhhh, the scary "conspiracy theory" codeword. Nothing to see here, folks, just some crazies. Move on.
Let's not dismiss it so lightly, shall we?
Dave Taylor, a professional geologist with 47 years experience, had a letter to the editor printed in the Silverton Standard on July 30 that predicted exactly this event as a result of the EPA's plan, and theorized that it would be an intentional act on the EPA's part to generate support for "SuperFunding" the Gold King Mine area, which they've been trying to do against public opposition for 25 years.
We'll have to see if they get the status and money they want to see if there's any credence to his theory.
Or we can just dismiss his amazing prescience as the ramblings of another loony conspiracy theorist, and assume that the relatively light coverage given to the story is just because there's so much more important stuff going on.
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I grew up in the Animas Valley, and I can vouch there's been a vicious decades-long battle to keep dams and developers from destroying one of the last free-running rivers in the West. Cynical locals' take is that the EPA took bribes from developers, and not just to Super-Fund the Gold King site. We're waiting to hear: 'Well, now that it's polluted, can we build the dam finally?'
' Watershed Lament' is a wall hanging I made, partially inspired by a college trip tracing the Animas from its headwaters down to its confluence with the San Juan River.
' Watershed Lament' is a wall hanging I made, partially inspired by a college trip tracing the Animas from its headwaters down to its confluence with the San Juan River.
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I don't know what the rest of you are watching, but I've seen quite a bit of coverage on multiple sources, TV, print, and internet. NBC Nightly News has covered it on multiple nights.
Aside from the EPA conspiracy theorizing, let's try not to forget who actually created the pollution problem in the first place: The mining industry.
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