Wednesday, the Senate Indian Affairs Committee issued a subpoena ordering Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy or Assistant Administrator Mathy Stanislaus to testify at a hearing on the Gold King Mine spill in Phoenix on April 22.
That is fine, as far as it goes. EPA work did trigger the spill, and as the agency’s top officials, McCarthy and Stanislaus should be held accountable. But so should the Senate, and what is becoming a protracted show trial should not be allowed to divert attention from the fundamental problem.
For that, look not to the Phoenix hearing but to Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., and his colleagues from New Mexico, Sens. Martin Heinrich and Tom Udall, and Rep. Ben Ray Luján, all Democrats. They are sponsors of legislation that could be a start to getting real results by reforming the General Mining Act of 1872.
A crew contracted by the EPA accidently set off the spill last August, sending 3 million gallons of orange-tinted sludge into Cement Creek above Silverton. From there the mine waste made its way into the Animas and San Juan rivers, and ultimately into Lake Powell.
The proximate cause of the spill was the fact that those in charge underestimated the water pressure in the mine. But the fundamental issue was the mine itself and the lax legal structure that has allowed such problems to develop. Until that overall situation is addressed, problems like the Gold King mess are going to continue.
Holding a couple of EPA administrators’ feet to the fire is good politics in some quarters and easy. But there are more than 200 mines in Colorado leaking toxic chemicals, while a 1993 report from the nonprofit Mineral Policy Center (now Earthworks) said there are more than 550,000 abandoned mines in 32 states, most in the West. And all of that came about because hard-rock mining has been – and still is – governed by a mining-friendly law enacted 144-years ago.
Unless and until that is reformed, this country’s problems with abandoned and leaking mines will not improve – no matter what critics do or say about the EPA.
