Okay, so I have a question... How is the Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA), the primary agency in this country for protecting the environment, and
one/some of your employees breach a dam sending 3 million gallons of pollutants
into a river and its tributary? From the
three floods in my hometown back in the '70s, I know that the raging force of
rushing liquid is something to be reckoned with, but not one person could have
thought of a way to stop it, or at least slow it down before 3 MILLION gallons
spilled out? Three million gallons is a
lot of poison. The enormity of the
situation is palpable, affecting two states so far (Colorado and New Mexico)
and all of the cities and towns along the Animas and San Juan Rivers between
Durango, CO and Farmington, NM.
The people who reside in the area and local
businesses are going to be devastated on multiple levels, and here's why: as
reported by CNN, "one of the samples of mercury was nearly 10 times higher
than the EPA acceptable levels; samples of beryllium and cadmium were 33 times
higher, and one of the arsenic levels was more than 800 times
higher". Along with those
contaminants, iron, zinc and copper, heavy metals, also leaked into the
water. Officials are saying that it may
not seep into the ground and poison drinking water...okay, and my name is
Wilhelmina Fufu. In addition to all of
the above, residents will never be able to sell their homes...would you live
there? Then…to add insult to injury, the
EPA made no attempt to notify residents until the next day. As of today, the EPA is reporting that there
are areas of the Animas River that are back to levels before the
spill…REALLY? Could it be because all of
the contaminants have leaked into the soil already…I’m just saying.
Lastly, it's being reported that the effects of
the poison may not be as bad as they thought, because they put a cage
containing something like 20 fish in the water before the spill to see how they
fared in the water, and only one of them has died. They say that they can't be sure it died from
the poison...Hello, Wilhelmina here again.
I just can’t believe that based on the amount of poison that was leaked
into that lake, that there wouldn’t be serious future consequences to the
people of those areas for a very long time.
The EPA seriously needs to be held accountable for this monumental
environmental disaster, as countless lives, both human and animal are going to
be impacted for many years to come.
