House panel report slams EPA for Animas River spill, accuses administration of concealing details

A House committee investigative report released Thursday slammed the Environmental Protection Agency for the Animas River spill, attributing it to the crew’s sloppiness and accusing the Obama administration of deliberately concealing information about the accident. The House Natural Resources Committee majority staff investigation accused the EPA and Interior Department of “incompetence and willful efforts to evade consequences,” the result being that they “cannot be trusted to spearhead remediation of sites like the Gold King Mine.” “[I]t is clear that there is more to the Gold King Mine story than EPA and DOI have chosen to reveal,” said the report by the Republican majority staff. In addition, the committee faulted the three reports issued by the Obama administration, including the EPA’s own internal review and the Interior Department’s technical evaluation, saying that the reviews “offer shifting accounts of the events leading up to the spill and contain numerous errors, omissions, and inconsistencies.” Some of those “are not attributable to error or incompetence alone,” said the report’s executive summary...more