The Colorado Independent

Posts Tagged Animas River Stakeholders Group

Video: How not to clean up Colorado’s leaking mines

By | 12.10.09 | 8:25 am

If you want a good explanation of why it makes no sense to require every draining mine in Colorado to have a treatment plant at its base, check out the recently-posted video titled “Act of Congress: Good Samaritans and Draining…

Water cleanup bill in delicate dance with mining law reform

By | 11.30.09 | 12:06 pm

Just outside of Central City in Colorado’s Gilpin County, the historic Perigo gold mine drains metal-laden water at an average of 70 gallons per minute into a small perennial stream known as Gamble Gulch. Below the mine for six miles, the gulch is virtually devoid of life, according to the Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety.

A design for a proposed project has been completed, but Colorado won’t bid it out for construction because it worries that if it does, it open itself up, in perpetuity, to a lawsuit under the Clean Water Act.

Colo. water cleanups hobbled by ‘Good Samaritan’ legal risks

By | 09.24.09 | 1:16 pm

LEADVILLE — It’s a fall morning in the mountains just outside this Lake County town. Contractors in yellow earthmovers are cleaning up acid mine drainage in the Sugarloaf Mining District. They’re part of a unique government-nonprofit-college collaboration that has made great strides in improving water quality in the Lake Fork of the Arkansas River. Everyone involved in this feel-good project, however, is a target of potential lawsuits under the Clean Water Act.