The Gold King Mine Fiasco: What It Tells Us About the EPA

" We have written here and here about the EPA-caused spill of three million gallons of toxic liquid into the Animas River in Colorado. Private companies that have caused environmental disasters of that magnitude (or much less) have been criminally prosecuted; in some cases, individuals have been jailed. Will the EPA face similar accountability? 

The evidence strongly suggests that EPA never studied or calculated anything, had no operations plan vetted and approved by state officials or mining experts, was not trying to install a pipe – and was grossly careless and negligent. Toxic sludge was carried and deposited along hundreds of miles, contaminating water and riverbeds, where it will be stirred up for years during every heavy rainfall and snowmelt.

 The point can’t be emphasized enough: government is inherently less competent, less accountable and less transparent than private business. In popular culture, environmental disasters are always the fault of greedy profiteers in industry. But in reality, the most polluted places on the planet have always been those where government reigned supreme, like Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and China."

[Power Line]