By DAN ELLIOTT
DENVER (AP) — A Colorado mine that spewed 3 million gallons of contaminated wastewater into rivers in three Western states was designated a Superfund site Wednesday, clearing the way for a multimillion-dollar federal cleanup. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency added the inactive Gold King Mine and 47 other nearby sites to the Superfund list. It also included nine other sites in eight states and Puerto Rico. The Colorado Superfund designation is the beginning of a years-long effort to clean up the wreckage of a once-booming mining industry in the San Juan Mountains in the southwestern corner of the state. Abandoned mining sites send millions of gallons of acidic wastewater to creeks and rivers every year. "What a great benchmark for this community and for our downstream partners, that we got listed," said Bill Gardner, town administrator for Silverton, a mountain village not far from the Gold King. A federal crew inadvertently triggered the Colorado spill during preliminary cleanup work at the gold mine on Aug. 5, 2015, sending out a mustard-yellow plume that tainted rivers in Colorado, New Mexico and Utah.
The EPA estimates that 880,000 pounds of metalsflowed into the Animas River in Colorado, including arsenic, cadmium, copper, lead, mercury, nickel and zinc.
Utilities and farmers temporarily stopped drawing water from the rivers for drinking and irrigation. The EPA said water quality quickly returned to pre-spill levels. The spill triggered a storm of criticism of the EPA and at least three lawsuits. New Mexico has sued both the EPA and Colorado over the spill, while the Navajo Nation sued the federal government. Utah officials say they also plan to sue. Acting New Mexico Environment Secretary Butch Tongate said his state and other downstream jurisdictions were excluded from some of the Superfund planning. "We will persist in our fight to protect New Mexicans and to hold EPA fully accountable," he said in a written statement.
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