Who Needs Radical Islam When You Have the Perfect Storm

Toxic waste, crumbling infrastructure with corporate ownership, and lame agencies. We'll kill ourselves. (With a little help from gun-toting All-American nuts.)
 

A cloud of orange-brown, toxic mine water and sludge accidentally released by the US Environmental Protection Agency is flowing down the Animas River through the hearts of towns in Colorado and New Mexico, and ultimately toward a lake in a national park.

The water, described as an “unnatural” orange color and loaded with heavy metals, was flowing through a stretch of wilderness as of Friday afternoon from Durango, Colorado toward Farmington, New Mexico. It is flowing toward the western edge of the Navajo Nation and along the Glen Canyon national recreation area in Utah.

[...]

The EPA was working at the property as part of a plan to remediate the superfund site and stop a longtime flow of acidic, heavy metal-laden wastewater from the nearby Red and Bonita mine, all near the abandoned Gladstone mining town.

[...]

The huge amount of water nearly flooded Cement Creek as it flowed into the Animus River, after breaking free from a shoddy dam at the Gold King Mine. EPA officials said that a blockage of loose soil and little more was holding in the bright orange wastewater at Gold King, a former gold mine, when water broke loose. An EPA official estimated that 200 gallons of wastewater per minute was still flowing out of the mine as of Friday afternoon.

[...]

EPA officials later told reporters that the impact on human and environmental health was not immediately clear, because toxicologists are still analyzing data from water samples.

  Guardian

Yeah, I think we can guess.

Agency officials, saying they didn’t realize the severity of the event, didn’t tell community members until Thursday, a full day after fluorescent orange water began flowing through the center of western towns.

The lack of notification may have caused the water to be used to irrigate crops in the area, as farmers weren’t aware the water was contaminated.

[...]

“First off, I’d like to just say I’m sorry for what’s happened,” David Ostrander, the EPA’s head of emergency management told a standing-room-only crowd in Durango, Colorado Friday afternoon. “This is a huge tragedy, and it’s hard being on the other side of this, in terms of being the one who caused this incident.”

He's sorry. And it's hard for him.

Environmental Protection Agency.