Over the past couple weeks, the Animas river in Southern Colorado was polluted by a massive and accidental release of water contaminated by the toxic metals released from an inactive mine in Silverton, Colorado. The mine is just one of many such sites in the mineral rich San Juan Mountains in the headwaters of the Animas River and is similar to similar sites found around the world. The accidental release was caused as an EPA team was working at the site and will likely become one of the more unfortunate mistakes in the history of the agency.
The impacts of this accident are not yet known but in a region dotted with groundwater wells and for water ultimately distributed out to the thirsty cities of the southwestern US, the risks are obvious and potentially severe. As the impacts of the accident become clear, the blame has already been leveled on the EPA with threats of a lawsuit from the attorney general of Colorado. Clearly a mistake was made in Silverton last week but the question of responsibility runs far beyond an EPA crew operating heavy equipment next to ponds filled with contaminated water. In biogeochemistry we often use the idea of proximate and ultimate causes. Proximate causes are the things that are directly responsibility for other things happening. There’s no question of the proximate cause here. An EPA crew knocked a hole in an earthen dam in Silverton – on this point there is no debate. As to the question of the fundamental underlying reason there is now polluted mine waste in the Animas – the ultimate cause – well that’s a harder question to answer.
According to media reports, prior attempts to create a superfund designation for the site were opposed by local communities. Had this designation occurred (even with all the associated complexities and trade offs), it’s highly unlikely that there would be three million gallons of polluted mine waste sitting behind a sketchy earthen dam. Taking a step further back into the past, it’s fair to say that the only reason the EPA crew was on site in the first place is because a mining company left a highly contaminated site for taxpayers to clean up. We can take an even broader view and ask why the laws that govern the extraction of mineral resources (still) do not fully account for or mitigate the long-term environmental impacts of these activities. Lastly it’s reasonable to ask why the costs of metals mined in Colorado and elsewhere do not include the revenue that will now be lost from boating companies, fly fishing operations, and so on. Such questions go to the heart of how we manage our natural resources and whether our legal and economic systems are up to the task of doing so in a way that preserves both economic opportunity and environmental integrity. These are the ultimate causes of the Animas disaster but unfortunately not as simple as blaming the EPA.
The impacts of this accident are not yet known but in a region dotted with groundwater wells and for water ultimately distributed out to the thirsty cities of the southwestern US, the risks are obvious and potentially severe. As the impacts of the accident become clear, the blame has already been leveled on the EPA with threats of a lawsuit from the attorney general of Colorado. Clearly a mistake was made in Silverton last week but the question of responsibility runs far beyond an EPA crew operating heavy equipment next to ponds filled with contaminated water. In biogeochemistry we often use the idea of proximate and ultimate causes. Proximate causes are the things that are directly responsibility for other things happening. There’s no question of the proximate cause here. An EPA crew knocked a hole in an earthen dam in Silverton – on this point there is no debate. As to the question of the fundamental underlying reason there is now polluted mine waste in the Animas – the ultimate cause – well that’s a harder question to answer.
According to media reports, prior attempts to create a superfund designation for the site were opposed by local communities. Had this designation occurred (even with all the associated complexities and trade offs), it’s highly unlikely that there would be three million gallons of polluted mine waste sitting behind a sketchy earthen dam. Taking a step further back into the past, it’s fair to say that the only reason the EPA crew was on site in the first place is because a mining company left a highly contaminated site for taxpayers to clean up. We can take an even broader view and ask why the laws that govern the extraction of mineral resources (still) do not fully account for or mitigate the long-term environmental impacts of these activities. Lastly it’s reasonable to ask why the costs of metals mined in Colorado and elsewhere do not include the revenue that will now be lost from boating companies, fly fishing operations, and so on. Such questions go to the heart of how we manage our natural resources and whether our legal and economic systems are up to the task of doing so in a way that preserves both economic opportunity and environmental integrity. These are the ultimate causes of the Animas disaster but unfortunately not as simple as blaming the EPA.