BY: Ryan Flynn
The bright yellow water that gushed from Colorado’s Gold King mine and into the Animas River last summer has dissipated, but the environmental disaster continues downstream. An estimated 880,000 pounds of lead and other metals poured out of the Gold King in August when the Environmental Protection Agency fumbled a construction project and blew out the mine’s plug.
This… Read more »
Today, the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations held an oversight hearing to review the Presidential Memoranda on mitigation issued on November 3rd, 2015 to five federal agencies. The memoranda creates sweeping new statutory authority and new requirements that agencies must use when evaluating and approving projects on federal lands and waters.
“This Administration hasn’t shown… Read more »
Yesterday evening, House Committee on Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop (R-UT) issued subpoenas to the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) for documents related to the USACE’s peer review of DOI’s Technical Evaluation of the August 2015 Gold King Mine spill.
Republicans and Democrats on the Committee have raised numerous… Read more »
Today, the House Committee on Natural Resources released a Majority staff report detailing information uncovered during the Committee’s ongoing investigation of the EPA’s Gold King Mine blowout near Silverton, Colorado in August 2015.
The 73-page report documents the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) and the Department of the Interior’s (DOI) inaccurate and misleading accounts of… Read more »
Today, House Committee on Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop (R-UT) and Oversight & Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Louie Gohmert (R-TX) in a letter to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Inspector General Arthur Elkins Jr., strongly questioned the timing and substance of interviews conducted two weeks ago by EPA officials with material witnesses that could compromise… Read more »
TO: Inspector General Arthur Elkins Jr.
FROM: Rob Bishop, Chairman House Committee on Natural Resources
Louie Gohmert, Chairman Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
Dear Inspector General Elkins:
On August 17, 2015, your office, the Environmental Protection Agency's ("EPA") Office of Inspector General ("OIG"), sent a memorandum to EPA Region 8 Administrator Shaun… Read more »
At yesterday’s oversight hearing on the Department of the Interior’s (DOI) Role in the EPA’s Animas Spill, both Republicans and Democrats on the Committee raised numerous questions about the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ (USACE) involvement with the peer review process of the Bureau of Reclamation’s (BOR) study on the EPA’s Animas spill, particularly in light of USACE’s technical… Read more »
TO: Lieutenant General Thomas Bostick
FROM: Louie Gohmert, Chairman Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
Dear General Bostick:
On August 5, 2015, the Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA") caused the spill of approximately 3 million gallons of contaminated mine water from the Gold King Mine in San Juan County, Colorado. The contaminated plume traveled through the Animas… Read more »
TO: The Honorable Gene Dodaro
FROM: Rob Bishop, Chairman
Dear Mr. Dodaro:
On August 5, 2015, an Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA") crew working at the Gold King Mine near Silverton, Colorado spilled approximately 3 million gallons of contaminated mine water into Cement Creek. The plume then flowed into the Animas River, a tributary of the San Juan River. Four states and… Read more »
Following the oversight hearing on the Department of the Interior’s (DOI) Role in the EPA’s Animas Spill where Secretary Sally Jewell testified but failed to substantively answer the Committee’s questions, Chairman Rob Bishop (R-UT) requested an independent review from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) about the scope, objectivity, and thoroughness of the DOI report,… Read more »
