EPA: Mine spill dumped 880,000 pounds of metals in river

The Environmental Protection Agency says a 3 million-gallon spill from a southwestern Colorado gold mine last year may have dumped more than 880,000 pounds of metals into the Animas River. A preliminary report release Friday says some of the metals reached the San Juan River, which the Animas joins in New Mexico, but most settled into the Animas riverbed before that. Utah officials have said some contaminants reached their state, but Friday’s report doesn’t address that. An EPA-led cleanup crew inadvertently triggered the spill on Aug. 5 while doing preliminary cleanup work at the inactive Gold King Mine near Silverton, Colorado. The EPA report says most of the metals consisted of small particles and came from Cement Creek, a tributary that carried the water from the mine to the Animas.  AP