“Had the EPA/DRMS/ER people been private sector employees and supervisors, the U.S. EPA and the U.S. Justice Department would have prosecuted them as criminals and sought lengthy prison terms – just as they did with numerous U.S. citizens, including John Pozsgai, Bill Ellen, and employees of Freedom Industries and the Pacific & Arctic Railway. None of these ‘convicted felons’ intended to cause those accidents, and all were ‘absolutely, deeply sorry” for what happened. Why should the state and federal culprits be treated any differently, after having caused far worse environmental damage?”

This three-part series on the Gold King environmental disaster indicts both the practices of and the denial by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Part II examined what EPA’s contractors should have done given simple, well-known best practices:

The competent approach would have been to drill a “cased” hole (a borehole lined with steel pipe) from above the portal into an area behind the blockage…. 

“The competent approach would have been to drill a ‘cased’ hole (a borehole lined with steel pipe) from above the portal into an area behind the blockage…. The EPA/DRMS/ER crew could then use simple instruments to determine the water pressure and extent of water backup in the mine, before beginning to dig. This approach was actually suggested by professionals well in advance of the disaster.”

Information on Gold King and nearby mines was readily available as summarized in an informative article, topographic map, and schematic drawings by geologist David Briggs. He explains water flow and other relationships that the Red and Bonita and Sunnyside Mines may have with Gold King; discusses EPA pollution control activities in the area; and raises questions that EPA, DRMS, ER and EPA on-site coordinator Hayes Griswold should have asked before proceeding.…

“EPA and ER had simply ‘miscalculated’ how much water had backed up…. We were ‘very careful.’ The highly acidic, toxic flood was ‘worse aesthetically’ than in reality. Contaminants were ‘flowing too fast to be an immediate health threat.’ … The river is ‘restoring itself’ back to ‘pre-spill conditions’. We just need a ‘focused dialogue’ moving forward.

Can anyone imagine EPA or President Obama making such statements in the wake of a private industry accident? Just recall the hysteria over the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, Deepwater Horizon (Macondo) blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, PCB contamination in the Hudson and Fox Rivers, Duke Energy coal ash spill in North Carolina, and other accidents.”

Tom Sawyer would be proud. Rarely has there been a finer whitewash than EPA’s with the Gold King Mine disaster.…