U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Hearing on Animas River

Yesterday two panels testified for nearly five hours, the US House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing about the August mine waste spill in Animas River. First the committee member listens to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy — who was unwilling to be on the panel with the four other witnesses. I watched with fascination and disgust to learn more about how the EPA as an agency behaved throughout this disaster. 
Did you know that the Oversight and Government Reform Committee has more mining engineers than the EPA? The EPA employees NOT one mining engineer according to the Committee’s Chairman Congressman Bishop.
Many of the committee members expressed their constituents’ frustration and mistrust of the EPA. California Congressman Doug LaMalfa addressed this with Administrator McCarthy by saying.
LaMalfa: “First of all when I look at how people have to deal their government and their regulations is proportionality — we know how an accident is defined. It is when something happens that is out of their control. They didn’t intend to do. They didn’t want to happen and wished they could head it off somehow. But that said — accidents do happen and we forgive people for mistakes. Yet we see an unforgiveness attitude coming from your agency towards people who haven’t done things intentionally.

 

If you are interested in listening to this oh so fascinating hearing — go to https://oversight.house.gov/hearing/epas-animus-spill/ or see the link to that website on The Ag Information Network’s Facebook page.