Environmental Protection Agency officials require contractors to sign
secrecy pledges that in the case of the Gold King Mine spill kept the
public in the dark earlier this year about a Colorado mining disaster
that turned waters yellow as they flowed through two states and the
Navajo Nation. The EPA required Missouri-based Environmental Restoration LLC,
which was responsible for the spill of three million gallons of mining
waste into Cement Creek, a tributary of the Animas River, to sign what
is known in federal procurement regulations as a non-disclosure
agreement. But
these secrecy clauses are typical with the EPA — the same government
agency whose former administrator, Lisa Jackson, used an alias email
address to avoid public scrutiny. As a result, important details about the Aug. 5, 2015, environmental
disaster near Silverton, Colorado, remain hidden nearly three months
later. Taxpayers wouldn’t even know the identity of the firm but for
reporting by the Wall Street Journal that was based on a leak from an
anonymous EPA official. The spill occurred while an EPA official and company personnel were
working at the site and sent a flood of mining waste, including toxic
materials like cadmium, lead and arsenic, into the water sources for
people living in Colorado, Utah and New Mexico, as well as the Navajo
Nation. “With few exemptions, the public’s business should be done publicly,
not privately,” Open The Books founder Adam Andrzejewski told TheDCNF.
“After a major spill, the EPA’s worst practices are coming to light —
shrouding the public business in privacy.”...more
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