DENVER (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency says fish and other aquatic life didn’t suffer severe or long-lasting damage from a 2015 mine waste spill that polluted rivers in three states.
An EPA report released last week analyzed the effects of Gold King Mine spill in southwestern Colorado, which an EPA-led contractor inadvertently triggered. Rivers in Colorado, New Mexico and Utah were polluted with a bright yellow-orange plume carrying iron, aluminum and other metals.
The EPA says parts of the Animas River in Colorado were already so polluted by decades of waste spilling from inactive mines that some fish had already been killed or driven off.
The agency says that in other areas, the potential damage to fish was lower because the pollution was diluted and kept moving downriver, so they weren’t exposed long.
