Massive environmental disaster in Colorado mining incident polluting the Animas River.

By Rob Janicki
A massive release of a soup mix of highly toxic contaminants has raised concerns of residents along the Animas River and further downstream.

Right wing corporations will surely be blamed for this very foreseeable crime against the environment as they seek to maximize profits at the cost of the environment and human lives.

Oops!  Strike that thought.  The disaster has been caused by the EPA, the supposed guardians of the environment.

The EPA says it was using heavy machinery to investigate pollutants at the Gold King Mine on Wednesday morning when it accidentally released an estimated 1 million gallons of mining waste into a creek. The waste spewed from the creek into the Animas River north of Silverton, Colorado, turning the water an opaque orange color reminiscent of boxed mac and cheese.

“This is a huge tragedy. It’s hard being on the other side of this. We typically respond to emergencies, we don’t cause them,” David Ostrander, EPA’s director of emergency preparedness for the region, said at a community meeting held in Durango, Colorado on Friday afternoon. “But this is just an unanticipated situation that didn’t quite come out as planned.”

So, this was an unanticipated event with an unintended consequence, but it's okay, because the EPA had good intentions.  Can't this argument be used by polluters?  After all, they don't want to lose money with unanticipated and unintended consequences that will affect their bottom line profits.  Businesses have every motivation to maintain the environment they find themselves in, since doing otherwise, places them in financial jeopardy with untold liabilities that could drive them into bankruptcy.  The EPA, on the other hand, is protected by law from their own negligence and the resulting costs to correct their negligent acts.  EPA officials will not be brought to pay for their negligent actions.  It will be the taxpayers that will have to foot the bills to clean up this environmental disaster.

This latest EPA boondoggle is just another example and reason whey the EPA needs to be reined in.  They are an autocratic authoritarian organization that is essentially a kingdom unto itself, with little effective congressional oversight.