The Gold King Mine Blowout
Introduction:
In the Rocky Mountains, The Gold King Mine created a devastating environmental problem that affected the area with toxic pollution leaked into the Animas river. The gold and silver mine consisting of subsurface tunnel systems had been collecting toxic water since it was shut off in 1991. The collected water and toxins were then released into the Animas suddenly August 5 just last year. (Jonathan, HCN)
Background
On August 5th 2015 Gold king Mine experienced one of the worse spills of the year. Contaminating rivers and streams along Colorado and parts of New Mexico and Nevada. Even though, today the mine has been abandoned for decades, the mine has become a hazardous “blowout”.
Figure : Miners work inside the Gold King Mine, 1899.
Gold King mine was first active in the late 1880’s for its extraction of gold and silver. First claimed by Willis Z. Kinney for seeing its potential for being an economic success . Using a type of mining called subsurface, which creates tunnels and shafts to reach the mineral deposit. Gold and silver being a high commodity for uses like jewelry and and other luxaries items had a high demand to be sold. Over the lifetime of Gold King Mine has produced about $150,000,000 (The Gold King Mine: From An 1887 Claim 2015). However, the mining was ceased in the 1920’s and over the years ownership of the mine been has shifted multiple times. Today the owner of the mine is Todd Hennis and was under his ownership that this spill occurred.
Figure : Gold King Mine Spill Water & Sediment Sample Locations
Figure : Picture depicting precipitation seeping into the Gold King mountain creating a freshwater spring (Gold King Mine water was headed for the Animas, anyway 2015).
Discussion
At that time during what was considered the mining golden age the main method of extraction was subsurface mining. This method involves drilling a hole into the ground creating a shaft and tunnels underground where miners can extract the precious metals kept underground. Sometimes these metals are hard to remove so it requires the use of a solvent to dissolve the rocks until only the metals remain. This creates a huge environmental issue in the form of acid drainage in order to keep the mines clean and safe for their employees they have to pump all of that water out. Unfortunately that
means that most of this acidic water ends up outside in our environment, this disrupts an aquatic ecosystems pH levels by raising them to a level that that ecosystem is not used to(For Dummies). In some cases the water also ends up becoming part of the groundwater and seeps into our soil and raises the pH level of the soil meaning that plants have a harder time growing and in sometimes cannot grow at all. In our case the Gold king mine had been shut down for around 15 years, since the mine was closed the water was not pumped out for 15 years creating a large acid mine drain deposit that the EPA underestimated. Upon investigation of the mine they breached a small hole in the mine's entrance releasing an estimated 3 million gallons of acid mine drainage into the Cement Creek one of the Animas rivers tributaries(Superfund Research project). The impacts of this event were enormous and felt throughout most of the Silverton Durango area as well as parts of Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, 12 Native American tribes that live along the river were also impacted by this spill. One of the impacts was agriculture many of the farmers in that area depend on water they divert from the river to irrigate their crops. The spill caused the water to have a mix of chemicals that were toxic to the crops they were growing and as a result the irrigation system had to be shut off. Another issue that the drainage caused was that fish in the spill zone were contaminated with the metals that were in the water, thankfully there was no real change to the fish population as Joe Lewandowski, the spokesperson for the Colorado parks and wildlife stated that the fish population did not look any different from what it did that summer(Denver Post). And one more major impact that the spill had was on the drinking water. The water was so polluted that people in the areas affected went a few days without clean drinking water.
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| Figure : EPA to Blame for ‘Preventable’ Gold King Mine Spill
Conclusion:
Due to years of lack of regulations, the Gold King Mine blowout was bound to happen. Though this mining site has been inactive for decades, these mining companies created the environment that caused the spill and contaminate miles of streams and rivers. Overall this issue was much avoidable if only to take steps of draining the polluted water properly.
LINKS
Romeo, Jonathan. "Gold King Mine Owner: I Won’t Let Gladstone Get Stolen from Me." Durango Herald. 1 Aug. 2015. Web. 13 Jan. 2016.
http://www.durangoherald.com/article/20151028/NEWS01/151029576/Gold-King-owner:-I-won%E2%80%99t-let-Gladstone-get-stolen-from-me
Thompson, Jonathan. "Gold King Mine Water Was Headed for the Animas, Anyway." - High Country News. High Country News, 28 Aug. 2015. Web. 13 Jan. 2016.
http://www.hcn.org/articles/acid-mine-drainage-explainer-animas-pollution-epa-gold-king
Chief, Karletta. "Understanding the Gold King Mine Spill." Superfund. University of Arizona, 1 Nov. 2015. Web. 14 Jan. 2016.
Spooner, Alecia. "Ecological Effects of Subsurface Mining." Dummies. Environmental Science For Dummies. Web. 13 Jan. 2016.
"The Gold King Mine: From An 1887 Claim, Private Profits and Social Costs." Colorado Public Radio. American Public Media, 17 Aug. 2015. Web. 14 Jan. 2016.
"EPA to Blame for 'Preventable' Gold King Mine Spill." Us News. 22 Oct. 2015. Web. 13 Jan. 2016.
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/10/22/epa-to-blame-for-preventable-gold-king-mine-spill-interior-dept-finds
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