Qualla: 2015 Gold King Mine Waste Water Spill

2015 Gold King Mine Waste Water Spill: Introduction

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit USEPA Environmental-Protection-Agency, Public domain. The Animas River ran bright orange on August 5, 2015. Not from a natural flood or an industrial accident in the usual sense, but because the very agency tasked with protecting America's waterways -- the Environmental Protection Agency -- had just breached a tailings dam at the Gold King Mine near Silverton, Colorado, releasing millions of gallons of toxic waste water laced with arsenic, lead, cadmium, and iron into Cement Creek and the Animas River watershed. The irony was as thick as the mustard-colored plume snaking downstream: the EPA had been working to prevent exactly this kind of catastrophe.

Image: USEPA Environmental-Protection-Agency | Public domain

2015 Gold King Mine Waste Water Spill: A Century of Poison Underground

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit USEPA Environmental-Protection-Agency, Public domain. Gold mining shaped the hills around Silverton from the late 1800s until 1991, when the last mine closed. But the mountains never forgot. When subsurface mining exposes metal sulfide minerals like pyrite to water and air, acid mine drainage begins -- a slow, relentless chemical pr...

Image: USEPA Environmental-Protection-Agency | Public domain

2015 Gold King Mine Waste Water Spill: Three Hundred Miles of Orange Water

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit USEPA Environmental-Protection-Agency, Public domain. The toxic plume moved fast. By August 7, it reached Aztec, New Mexico. The next day, it hit Farmington, the largest municipality affected. By August 10, the waste had entered the San Juan River and reached Shiprock on the Navajo Nation. Testing upstream of Durango revealed lead a...

Image: USEPA Environmental-Protection-Agency | Public domain

2015 Gold King Mine Waste Water Spill: The Navajo Nation Bears the Weight

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit USEPA Environmental-Protection-Agency, Public domain. For the Navajo Nation, the spill struck at the foundation of daily life. An estimated 2,000 Navajo farmers and ranchers depended on the San Juan River for irrigation. When the canals were shut down on August 7, crops withered. While water trucks were dispatched to some areas, man...

Image: USEPA Environmental-Protection-Agency | Public domain

2015 Gold King Mine Waste Water Spill: A Legacy Still Flowing

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit USEPA Environmental-Protection-Agency, Public domain. The Gold King spill was not the end of the story. In July 2018, a truck hauling waste water from a temporary treatment plant crashed into a creek near the mine, spilling sludge back into the watershed. The Associated Press reported that more than 350 million gallons of contaminat...

Image: USEPA Environmental-Protection-Agency | Public domain