GOP blasts EPA on mine spill anniversary

Republicans are using the first anniversary of a major mine waste spill in Colorado to criticize the Obama administration’s response to the incident.

Friday marked a year since an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) contractor caused 3 million gallons of toxic sludge from the Gold King Mine to flow from an abandoned mine into a tributary of the Animas River in Colorado.

{mosads}The GOP says the EPA hasn’t done enough to show accountability or responsibility for the spill and its aftermath.

“A year later, the Obama administration still won’t tell us the whole truth. Accounts of events from Interior and EPA have been inconsistent and artfully misleading,” House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah) said in a statement.

“The EPA insists they had no plan to dig out the plug, but they did and without testing,” he said. “There has been zero accountability on the part of the administration, the only thing that has changed since last August is their story.”

Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee said the administration owes more to the American Indian tribes whose reservations are on the rivers that were polluted.

“The Navajo Nation, the Southern Ute, the Hopi tribe and many others have had to deal with this mess,” the senators said. “The EPA has done a poor job of taking responsibility for the spill, cleaning up the toxins, helping the farmers and families affected, and remaining transparent throughout this process.”

They cited a report from the conservative American Action Forum saying that the spill and cleanup cost $27.7 billion.

The EPA, for its part, promptly took responsibility for the spill.

In a Monday blog post, Mathy Stanislaus, who leads the agency’s land and emergency response office, said he and his colleagues are dedicated to learning from the incident and helping the area recover.

“Over the past year, we have remained committed to distilling important lessons from the incident, and are working on a more permanent solution to acid mine drainage in the Upper Animas Watershed,” he wrote.

“We have improved and tested stakeholder notification lists, instituted a headquarters review and state consultation process for all mine work plans prior to starting work at a site, provided grant assistance to foster collaboration and help support state and tribal water quality management programs, and are developing a national report on best practices for hardrock mine remediation.”

The EPA released a report that day tallying the $29 million it has spent over the last year on response and monitoring for the spill.