Geologist Prediction: The EPA Will Intentionally Pollute The Animas River

What the op-ed predicted was that the plan to plug the mine would fail as water backed up and eventually began leaking right back into the river, possibly through loose rocks on the hillside. Note that the 500 gpm flow the author predicts will eventually return to the creek is the same flow that was coming out of the mine prior to the attempt to plug it. So this isn’t the prediction of a catastrophic release. Rather, he seems to be saying the same amount of water will end up in the creek eventually.

What actually happened was worse than the letter’s author predicted. Last Wednesday, EPA workers were reportedly using heavy equipment in an effort to insert a pipe which could be used to pump water out of a mine for treatment. Instead, workers accidentally collapsed part of the mine entrance, sending 3 million gallons of contaminated water directly into the river.

The op-ed may not have predicted the disaster, but it did foresee the general nature of the problem the EPA was dealing with. As already mentioned, the EPA was attempting to plug the 500 gpm flow of water coming from the Red and Bonita mines. But as the op-ed predicted, that would necessarily cause water to back up into other nearby mines. The EPA was attempting to stabilize one of those other mines, the Gold King mine upstream, when the disaster took place.

And that leads to another factor mentioned in the op-ed which also came into play last week. According to USA Today, “an EPA team working at the mine on Wednesday underestimated how much pressure was hidden behind the debris that plugged the mine’s entrance.” So, failure to account for the water pressure played a role in the release.

The op-ed did touch on some actual dangers the EPA was dealing with. It may even have proven to be ultimately accurate if the EPA hadn’t accidentally caused the huge release of water with heavy equipment last week. As it is, we’ll never know what the result would have been if that hadn’t happened.

Finally, the letter’s author goes on to suggest, absent any real evidence, that all of this was part of a “hidden agenda” by the EPA to turn the area into a Superfund site, something the state has resisted because of the potential impact on tourism and trade.