{"id":115751,"date":"2025-08-03T13:57:16","date_gmt":"2025-08-03T13:57:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/115751\/"},"modified":"2025-08-03T13:57:16","modified_gmt":"2025-08-03T13:57:16","slug":"10-years-since-gold-king-mine-spill-residents-wait-for-a-solution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/115751\/","title":{"rendered":"10 years since Gold King mine spill, residents wait for a solution"},"content":{"rendered":"

SILVERTON<\/strong><\/p>\n

On a cloudy day in late July, Anthony Edwards looked out at where Cement Creek meets the Animas River in Silverton, a town in southwestern Colorado. Nearly 10 years prior, he stood in the same spot watching as millions of gallons of acid mine drainage gushed past, turning the water a sickly yellow-orange.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all knew that this was going to change everything,\u201d recalled Edwards, who was San Juan County\u2019s spokesperson during the spill.<\/p>\n

On Aug. 5, 2015, contractors for the Environmental Protection Agency inadvertently unleashed 3 million gallons of wastewater trapped behind the collapsed entrance of Gold King mine while doing excavation work in remote San Juan County. The yellow, heavy-metal-laden water impacted communities from Colorado to Utah. It drew national and international attention, forcing the ongoing impacts of historic mine pollution into the spotlight.<\/p>\n

At the time, people hoped the Gold King mine spill would pressure the federal government and communities to finally reckon with the legacy of mining in southwestern Colorado and its impact on water and aquatic life. The EPA quickly set up an interim treatment plant to catch contaminated water from Gold King, but other mines in the Bonita Peak Mining District are still draining right into the rivers and streams. And 10 years later, some local advocates and experts are frustrated with the slow pace of action.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe EPA has done nothing to significantly improve water quality,\u201d said Peter Butler, a leading expert on Animas River water quality. Even though they\u2019ve spent somewhere near $140 million in the last decade, he added.<\/p>\n

Acid mine drainage<\/a> is a global issue. In the United States, the drainage comes out of coal and metal mines across the country. In 1994, a few years after the last gold mine in Silverton closed, the Forest Service estimated there were about 20,000 to 50,000 mines<\/a> leaking onto Forest Service lands in the West.<\/p>\n

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LEFT:<\/strong> Cement Creek flows a few miles downstream from the Gold King mine in August 2015 after a wastewater accident colored the water an unnatural orange color. RIGHT: <\/strong>Ten years later, the water from Cement Creek still carries heavy metals and minerals into the Animas River, as shown by a rainbow affect in the Animas below its intersection with the creek in Silverton. (AP Photo, file\/Brennan Linsley; Shannon Mullane, The Colorado Sun)<\/p>\n

The lead-up<\/strong><\/p>\n

Silverton, a small town tucked away in the San Juan Mountains at 9,300 feet in elevation, is tied closely to its mining legacy. Tourists talk about finding gold. The historical society touts its \u201cworld class\u201d museum and underground mining exhibit, which has been recognized by the Smithsonian Institution. The community knew about the drainage \u2014 how could you not when the orange-brown Cement Creek still runs right through town?\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the 1990s and early 2000s, Silverton residents and local groups, like the Animas River Stakeholders Group, did sampling, weighed treatment options and debated seeking federal Superfund status. But while they debated, acidic water built up<\/a> in the web of mine shafts, drifts and tunnels cut into the innards of Bonita Peak north of town.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That build-up continued until 2015, when 3 million gallons of water spilled out of the Gold King mine opening. The acidic water was thick with copper, zinc, aluminum, lead, iron, arsenic and other metals.<\/p>\n

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LEFT:<\/strong> Dan Bender with the La Plata County Sheriff\u2019s Office, takes a sample of the Animas River in August of 2015. RIGHT: <\/strong> The off-color river catches the attention of onlookers. (Jerry McBride, The Durango Herald)<\/p>\n

The water didn\u2019t kill off sensitive fish and insect species mainly because they were already dead and gone after years of naturally mineralized runoff and prior acute mining-related releases, Scott Roberts, aquatic ecologist for the Mountain Studies Institute, said in an interview in July.<\/p>\n

He studies insects and aquatic ecosystems in the Upper Animas River watershed and tracks acid mine drainage to assess its impacts on aquatic life.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Gold King was not the first, and not even the last, unplanned mine release that\u2019s happened in this watershed,\u201d Roberts said.<\/p>\n

Within months of the spill, the EPA set up a temporary treatment plant to catch Gold King\u2019s drainage. Lawsuits abounded and distrust of the feds reached a fever pitch. The EPA took charge, establishing a Superfund site in 2016 called the Bonita Peak Mining District<\/a>. The Superfund site includes 48 historic mines or mining-related sources of acidic drainage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis event really shook the EPA,\u201d said Butler, who led the Superfund community advisory group for years. \u201cThe EPA ended up being called a potential responsible party under Superfund law. That was a first.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, years of data-gathering are about to transition into big decisions and action on how to treat pollution from the Bonita Peak Mining District, said Chara Ragland, the community group\u2019s new chairperson.<\/p>\n

The main focus is on addressing drainage from the \u201cbig three\u201d polluters: tailings piles at Mayflower Mill and Howardsville northeast of Silverton that drain into the Animas, and mines that drain into Cement Creek.<\/p>\n

But the Trump administration\u2019s staffing and funding cuts at the EPA are slowing down some work. Some projects have been done, but the main polluters still degrade water quality. The work to heal the bleeding mountain is years from completion. After that, the state will take over ongoing monitoring and maintenance, Ragland said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not like you can ever just totally walk away. Unfortunately, that\u2019s just sort of the reality of hard rock mining,\u201d Ragland said. \u201cThey have successfully remediated close to half of the sites in the mining district. So we have progress.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"People kayak in the Animas River near Durango in 2015 after the mine-waste spill. (Jerry McBride, The Durango Herald via AP file)<\/p>\n

The first 72 hours<\/strong><\/p>\n

Edwards, the San Juan County spokesman, remembered getting a text saying there was a problem up near Gold King. People knew the EPA was up at the Gold King mine site trying to figure out what to do about the contaminated water. He was waiting for 45 minutes before the plume surged into Silverton. They had no idea what was coming into town with it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was just trying to figure out what happened, wondering, \u2018is everybody OK?\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Upstream, the EPA contractors watched as murky orange-brown water leaked out of the rubble at the collapsed Gold King mine opening on the morning of Aug. 5.<\/p>\n

What started as a trickle quickly turned into a torrent. Orange-yellow water rushed down the mountainside into Cement Creek. The erosive force of the water coming out of the mine\u2019s entrance picked up metal-laden sediment that was outside of the mine and carried it downstream.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The EPA estimated that 99% of the metals were actually from waste rock outside of the mine that were picked up by the gushing water, Roberts said.<\/p>\n

\"YouTube<\/p>\n

The SunnyD-colored plume would eventually travel over 100 miles downstream. It gushed down the Animas River, which runs north to south near U.S. 550 (the scenic Million Dollar Highway).<\/p>\n

Butch Knowlton, then La Plata County\u2019s emergency manager, quickly started doing the math to determine how long it would take for the plume to flow past the Animas Valley Irrigation Ditch north of Durango. The plume reached the firmly shut headgate at around 6 a.m. Aug. 6.<\/p>\n

The city of Durango stopped pumping raw water from the river. State wildlife officials put cages of small fish into the river to try to see if the murky water was dangerous enough to kill. People rushed to grocery stores to buy bottled water.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Butler remembered about 150 people gathered at 32nd Street Bridge to wait, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was kind of fearful. Eerie and quiet,\u201d Butler said. \u201cI remember seeing somebody\u2019s kids playing in the water, and somebody screaming, \u2018Get them out of the water!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The plume flowed into Durango around 8 p.m. Aug. 6.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Animation of the plume of contaminants as it flowed down Cement Creek, the Animas River, the San Juan River and on to Lake Powell after the Gold King mine spill on Aug. 5, 2015. (Video provided by Searchlight New Mexico)<\/p>\n

It went south to the San Juan River then west into Utah and, eventually, Lake Powell, one of the main storage reservoirs for the 40 million people living in the Colorado River Basin.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In Farmington, New Mexico, Calvin Yazzie, a Navajo farmer and rancher, watched the sickly yellow-colored water flow into the San Juan River. Yazzie drew water from the San Juan to grow alfalfa and raise cattle on a small farm and ranch.<\/p>\n

Everything was chaotic, even panicky. The rivers have spiritual significance in Navajo culture. They prayed to the river for forgiveness, Yazzie said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t understand. Why? Why did they allow this to happen?\u201d Yazzie said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A legacy of mining<\/strong><\/p>\n

The legacy of mining in Silverton and San Juan County made it difficult, maybe even impossible, to tell where exactly the water came from and who was at fault.<\/p>\n

Silverton was the mining town that wouldn\u2019t quit. Mining was the town\u2019s heartbeat since its birth in 1874. Within a few decades, Silverton was a thriving community, with schools, shops and families brought together by their shared ties to the mining industry.<\/p>\n

For Tom Horton, who works at the San Juan Historical Museum, it\u2019s a living history. He remembered hearing about heists, gold disguised in paint cans ($165,000 per can), and talking with miners from the town\u2019s first days. One miner said he was 12 years old when he and his dad hiked over the steep terrain of the San Juan Mountains from Mancos to Rico to Silverton to work in the Old 100 Gold Mine near Howardsville, Horton said.<\/p>\n

In its early years, Silverton was a wild place, with people coming from far and wide to try to strike it rich and ending their days in its saloons.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Olaf Arvid Nelson was one of those people. In 1887, he located the original Gold King claim on the slopes of Bonita Peak, but died before he could make his fortune.<\/p>\n

\"WaterWater flows through a series of sediment retention ponds built to reduce heavy metal and chemical contaminants from the Gold King mine outside Silverton in August of 2015. (Brennan Linsley, AP Photo, file)<\/p>\n

For years, the largely unregulated mining companies came in, went bankrupt and sold off mines, including Gold King and its competitors like the Sunnyside and Mogul mines. Miners kept burrowing into Bonita Peak, eventually blasting an 11,000-foot-long tunnel through the mountain, called the American Tunnel. Gold King stayed dry as water flowed deeper into the mountain.<\/p>\n

The mountain\u2019s once-untouched rock turned into a honeycomb of tunnels that more closely resembled Swiss cheese.<\/p>\n

After Gold King closed in the 1920s, the Sunnyside mine<\/a> was the biggest on the mountain. It lasted until 1991 when it was closed for good.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The mine\u2019s owner Echo Bay, a Canadian company doing business as Sunnyside Gold Corporation, had been treating the mine drainage. As it prepared to shut down the water treatment plant, the company plugged the American Tunnel, adding three bulkheads and creating a pool of water deep inside the mountain.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After that, drainage from the \u201cdry\u201d Gold King mine started to increase. By 2009, the state Division of Mining Reclamation and Safety called the Gold King \u201cone of the worst high quantity, poor water quality draining mines in the state of Colorado,\u201d according to Jonathan Thompson, author of \u201cRiver of Lost Souls<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time the water burst through Gold King\u2019s collapsed entrance, the property boundaries inside the mountain and how water passed between them was an ownership labyrinth. Sunnyside Gold, which denied that plugging the American Tunnel caused the spill, paid out millions of dollars in settlements.<\/p>\n

10 years later<\/strong><\/p>\n

A decade later, details of the spill are clearer even if the water coming out of the mines around Silverton remains murky.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Gold King spill hardly had any environmental impact, according to research before and after the incident. Aquatic ecosystems were already reduced by natural forces tied to a long-ago collapsed volcano and the mineralized rocks in the San Juans. Some waterways were already aquatic dead zones. Fish and insects already faced reproductive challenges.<\/p>\n

Mining just exacerbated those conditions, but in some cases, treating mining drainage helped bring aquatic species back, Roberts said.<\/p>\n

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LEFT:<\/strong> Anthony Edwards, former San Juan County spokesperson, was heavily involved in Silverton\u2019s response to the 3-million-gallon Gold King mine spill at the time. RIGHT: <\/strong> Butch Knowlton, left, and John Dillon, right, both board members of the Animas Valley Ditch and Water Company, check for debris at the headgate that diverts water from the Animas River into the Animas Valley Ditch near Durango. (Shannon Mullane, The Colorado Sun)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe canary in the coal mine was already absent,\u201d Roberts said. \u201cTherefore, we couldn\u2019t detect the change.\u201d<\/p>\n

In New Mexico, Yazzie lost about $10,000 worth of alfalfa and had to sell off his cattle. The irrigation canals were shut down too long, and customers didn\u2019t want produce grown next to the San Juan River.<\/p>\n

In 2018, he joined a lawsuit against the EPA<\/a> alongside about 300 other Navajo farmers. Seven and a half years after the spill, he received a payout from the $7.5 million settlement package.<\/p>\n

He never ranched again.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe sold out,\u201d Yazzie said. \u201cIf you wanted to see the face of a heartbroken man, that\u2019s how I was. I did my best to not allow that to happen, but \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

In Silverton, Edwards said the county and town staff are still sometimes swamped with Superfund work tied to the Bonita Peak Mining District.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The EPA focused on gathering data and tackling low-hanging projects, like stabilizing waste rock piles and cleaning up lead-contaminated soils, at over 20 of the mining district\u2019s 48 sites, Ragland said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The interim treatment plant<\/a> built after the spill is still treating drainage from Gold King. But the other main pollution sources \u2014 like the American Tunnel, Mogul Mine and the Red & Bonita Mine \u2014 are still sending acidic, metal-heavy water into the rivers and streams of the Upper Animas watershed.<\/p>\n

\u201cEPA is on track to propose key source control remedies for public comment next year,\u201d Cyrus Western, the agency\u2019s regional administrator, said. \u201cDoing things right takes time, but we\u2019re committed to long-term results.\u201d<\/p>\n

A plan to go inside the mine to treat acidic water in the maze of tunnels is up in the air. The EPA\u2019s Office of Research and Development was supposed to manage that, but the office has been thrown into turmoil<\/a> by budget and staffing cuts ordered by the Trump administration, Ragland said.<\/p>\n

In May, the EPA expected to wrap up work on a new repository site for sludge \u2014 the thick mixture of minerals, metals and water that remains after treatment \u2014 from Gold King. Federal staffing cuts caused delays for the project which will hopefully wrap up in the fall, Ragland said. In the meantime, more sludge is piling up in big, nearly full geotextile bags at the treatment facility.<\/p>\n

\"\"Geotextile bags at the interim treatment plant north of Silverton passively remove and hold solids while water is released. Once the bag is full, operators remove the sludge, which dries further in the open air. These bags are part of the treatment process for acidic drainage from the Gold King mine. (Shannon Mullane, The Colorado Sun)<\/p>\n

Locals and some people in the Community Advisory Group, or CAG, want the work to go faster. They want to see progress on improving water quality. They want a more detailed timeline for whether and how the EPA plans to treat all of the drainage running into Cement Creek.<\/p>\n

They want to make sure another spill like Gold King never happens again.<\/p>\n

Superfund law, established in the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, can be expensive and complex, Edwards said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAm I concerned and disappointed how long things take? I would say, yes,\u201d Edwards said. \u201cBut understanding the CERCLA<\/a> process, the scrutiny and requirements take a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The CAG is advising the EPA on a treatment plan and staying in touch on big decisions about other sites in the mining district at Mayflower Mill and Howardsville, Ragland said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Everyone is worried about long-term funding once settlement money runs out, she said. The Superfund\u2019s goal is to improve water quality, so they\u2019d face tough decisions if they don\u2019t have enough money to address all of the big problem areas.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf that\u2019s all we have, how are we going to prioritize, if we have Howardsville and Mayflower and the Gold King mine?\u201d Ragland said. \u201cAre we not going to do one of those and be left with significant contamination in this area?\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking ahead, Yazzie wants farming and fresh produce stands to return to roads along the San Juan River. Butler wants to reduce metal concentrations and help aquatic life in the river systems. Roberts just wants to make sure that the solutions are based on science.<\/p>\n

Ragland described herself as an optimist but also a realist. People can never completely fix things once they mess them up, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes there\u2019s just no going back,\u201d she said, \u201cbut I don\u2019t see that that gives me a pass to not keep on trying.\u201d<\/p>\n

Type of Story: News<\/p>\n

Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SILVERTON On a cloudy day in late July, Anthony Edwards looked out at where Cement Creek meets the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":115752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[72615,746,72616,72617,159,72618,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-115751","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-colorado-sunday","9":"tag-environment","10":"tag-gold-king-mine","11":"tag-san-juan-county","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-silverton","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114965187430397183","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}