Congressional Republicans revived “Good Samaritan” legislation Thursday designed to encourage companies and nonprofits to help clean up thousands of abandoned mines across the nation by protecting them from liability for environmental accidents.
The proposal was one of three the House Natural Resources Committee unveiled after the Environmental Protection Agency inadvertently unleashed 3 million gallons of wastewater laced with heavy metals from an inactive Colorado gold mine in August. Rivers were contaminated in Colorado, New Mexico and Utah, including the Southern Ute Reservation and Navajo Nation.
A second bill would allow the Bureau of Land Management and nonprofits to solicit donations to clean up abandoned mines and oil and gas wells. The BLM oversees more than 380,000 square miles of federal land. The third would funnel more money toward training mining engineers as the current generation nears retirement.
An EPA-led contractor crew accidentally triggered the spill at the Gold King Mine in southwestern Colorado while trying to drain water backed up inside. The crew was trying to insert a drainage pipe through debris blocking the mine but didn’t measure the water depth first, according to the Interior Department.
