GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump says a toxic spill unleashed by an Environmental Protection Agency contractor is a “disgraceful” event that is bound to “kill everything” in the Animas and San Juan rivers, which turned yellow from a cocktail of chemical sludge.
Trump made the comments on the Hugh Hewitt radio show Wednesday.
“I’m looking at that every night now on the news, and the water is pure yellow. It’s all acid, the worst stuff,” Trump commented. Its “probably going to kill the fish, kill everything. And it was totally their mistake.”
Trump said the chemical spill that has captivated the news cycle for days is a prime example of why states should be in charge of their own waste facilities, and not Washington. The spill occurred at a gold mine in Colorado Aug. 5 when an EPA contractor accidentally ruptured a containment wall holding back millions of gallons of contaminated sludge.
“They opened the wrong door and all of this stuff spewed out,” said Trump. “This is all the more example why … we should do it locally. We shouldn’t be doing it from Washington. It’s disgraceful.”
Hewitt asked Trump whether he would fire the head of the EPA if the same thing happened on his watch. “That depends,” he said. “Look, everybody makes mistakes.”
“But this is a terrible thing,” he added. “They just made a pure mistake. Often times for a thing like this, you have to just get rid of them.”
EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy has come under criticism from both Republicans and Democrats for how the agency handled its response to the incident. She is now in Colorado overseeing the response effort personally.
