Fish affected by the Environmental Protection Agency’s August 2015 Gold King Mine disaster are still safe to eat, a New Mexico official said, contradicting an EPA report commissioned to support its controversial Superfund proposal.
Toxins in fish tissue spiked after the disaster that dumped three million gallons of mine waste into the Animas River, but were still safe to eat, New Mexico Department of Game and Fish’s Eric Frey told a recent Gold King Mine Spill Citizens’ Advisory Committee meeting.
“A lot of people are scared to eat the fish,” San Juan Chapter of the Navajo Nation President Rick Nez said at the meeting, adding that tribal members no longer catch catfish for sustenance. (RELATED: EPA Pollutes River, Uses Scare Tactics To Take Control Of A Colorado Town)
Meanwhile, a previous EPA study reported that people around the proposed Superfund site face the greatest possible danger from the “human food chain.”
The EPA study, which was conducted to support the agency’s Superfund proposal to designate Colorado’s Gold King and 47 other mines in the region as a Superfund site, also blatantly skipped evaluating drinking water threats.
EPA officials renewed their long-standing proposal shortly after an EPA work crew in August 2015 accidentally caused a three-million gallon flood of waste from the Gold King Mine. The flood included 880,000 tons of toxic elements like lead and arsenic and polluted the Animas River, which supplies water for people in three states and the Navajo Nation.
Colorado residents had opposed the designation for two decades because it gives EPA extensive powers over the local economy around a site.
EPA officials have also claimed the Superfund designation is necessary because decades of mine waste have decimated local fish populations. But recent studies show the August 2015 Gold King Mine spill hasn’t harmed fish, Mexico’s Farmington Daily Times recently reported.
The Gold King Mine spill “was an acute release that did not result in apparent acute impacts on the current fish populations in the Animas River (fish kills did not occur in response to the release),” an EPA spokeswoman who asked not to be named told The Daily Caller News Foundation [emphasis theirs]. “However, discharge from historic mining activities … have been occurring in the Animas for decades, and have led to declining fish populations in the watershed and the complete absence of fish in Cement Creek.”
The new studies conclude that more monitoring is needed to determine long-term effects, Frey said at the meeting.
New Mexico officials have previously argued that the EPA has downplayed the Gold King Mine disaster’s danger to human health. The state has since filed lawsuits against the federal agency, mine owners and the state of Colorado.
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