EPA: We ‘shirked’ Gold King Mine spill response
Sen. Tom Udall and Environmental Protection Agency Director Scott Pruitt don’t agree on much, but they did concur Tuesday that the federal government’s response to those harmed by the Gold King Mine spill two years ago wasn’t good enough.
The August 2015 mine spill occurred when a crew hired by the EPA to mitigate leakage from an old mine site accidentally punctured a containment wall, sending a plume of toxic orange waste out of the defunct Gold King Mine, north of Silverton, Colo. The sludge flowed from the Animas River into northern New Mexico’s San Juan River.
Claims totaling more than $1.2 billion have been filed by members of the Navajo Nation and others. In January — just before former President Barack Obama left office — the EPA announced it would not pay damages in the case, citing sovereign immunity from such claims. At a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing to consider the EPA’s budget request on Tuesday, Udall said, “We owe to the Navajo and others harmed to make things right.”
“I’m not sure the agency has taken full responsibility,” Pruitt said in response. “I think the agency’s response to the Gold King spill ... shirked its response to help compensate claimants that were injured.”
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court said it would not hear a case brought by New Mexico against Colorado after the spill. New Mexico contends Colorado was too lax in its oversight of groundwater contaminated by decades of mining and should be held responsible for the fallout of the Gold King Mine spill. NM COUNTIES SHARE
$38.7M: President Donald Trump’s federal budget request for next year would cut payments to rural counties that contain big swaths of nontaxable federal lands but, for now, New Mexico is set to get the third-largest payment in lieu of taxes, PILT, in the nation.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said this week that 32 New Mexico counties will receive a shared total of $38.7 million. The payments represent the state’s share of a record $464.6 million distributed to 1,900 local governments around the country this year — the largest amount ever allocated in the PILT program’s 40-year history.
Under the 2018 budget proposal, Trump would cut PILT payments in 2018, but it’s not clear by how much.