Denver • The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced three long-term goals Wednesday for cleaning up the Bonita Peak Mining District Superfund site in southwestern Colorado.
The goals call for improving water quality in four sections of rivers and streams, stabilizing mine waste piles to keep more pollutants from leaching into waterways and preventing big releases of tainted water from mine shafts.
The Superfund site was established after the EPA inadvertently triggered a massive spill of 3 million gallons of wastewater from the Gold King Mine in 2015, tainting rivers in Colorado, New Mexico and Utah with a yellow-orange plume carrying toxic metals.