Utah’s Bishop asks for independent probe into Animas wastewater spill

Washington • Unhappy with the Interior Department's explanation of the August wastewater spill that polluted rivers in four states, and Utah's Lake Powell, House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob Bishop has requested an independent review of the government's actions and response to the incident.

The move followed an occasionally contentious hearing in which Bishop, a Utah Republican, pressed Interior Secretary Sally Jewell several times on her department's investigation of the spill, caused by an Environmental Protection Agency contractor.

Bishop blasted Jewell after the hearing and asked for a study by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

"The Department of the Interior's stonewalling the committee's repeated requests for information on the agency's report reached a disturbing level today when Secretary Jewell effectively refused to answer Congress' concerns about the report's objectivity and scope," Bishop said in a statement. Interior "must be held accountable for its obstructionist tactics regarding its involvement and lack of objectivity surrounding this disaster that spilled 3 million gallons of contaminated water into the Animas River, affecting four states and multiple tribes."

That plume of toxic wastewater, which had been held in a tailings pond from a former gold mine, flowed into Colorado's Animas River and eventually hit New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. Gov. Gary Herbert had declared a state of emergency following the spill, but Utah environmental officials have said no danger now exists.

Bishop contends that the Interior Department's report on the spill "glossed over" the most critical questions about how and why it occurred, and specifically what prompted the urgency to dig into the tailings pond without waiting for a technical review.

"If our goal in the aftermath of this spill is to learn lessons to prevent future disasters, the Interior report is a flop," Bishop said.

Jewell noted in her prepared testimony that there are tens of the thousands of abandoned hard-rock mines on federal lands, and that the responsibility for cleanup falls to the government because they often pre-date reclamation laws. She noted a request for legislation to charge a fee to hard rock-mining operators to help remediate the shuttered mines.

"It is unfortunate that the catalyst to address a problem is often an incident like this," Jewell said. "The department stands ready to work with the committee and Congress to address the issue in a meaningful way."

tburr@sltrib.com