The House science committee will hold hearings in September to probe the Environmental Protection Agency’s role in causing the huge toxic waste spill earlier this month in the West.
The Science, Space and Technology Committee is requesting that EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy testify at the hearing, which is scheduled for Sept. 9, just days after returning from the August congressional recess.
Republican Chairman Lamar Smith of Texas said Friday that the EPA has “an obligation to be forthcoming about what went wrong and potential long-term impacts on local communities.”
The EPA caused a toxic yellow plume of lead, mercury and other heavy metals to spill into the river systems of Colorado, New Mexico and Utah earlier this month. An EPA contractor ruptured a containment wall at an abandoned gold mine in Colorado, releasing millions of gallons of toxic sludge into the Animas River.
Smith says that weeks after the spill, “families and businesses who depend on the Animas River continue to deal with uncertainty and limited information.”
“As the agency entrusted by the American people to protect the environment and ensure the nation’s waters are clean, the EPA should be held to the highest standard,” he said. “The Science Committee needs to hear from the EPA about steps it is taking to repair the damage and to prevent this from ever occurring again.”
Earlier this week, the agency’s inspector general started an investigation into the spill. Both Democrats and Republicans have criticized EPA for both the spill and for its lackluster response.
Local and state authorities said it was hard to communicate with agency officials to coordinate a response effort.
The Democratic delegation from New Mexico urged McCarthy to travel to Colorado to personally oversee the response effort after hearing from state officials that the EPA had been unresponsive. McCarthy agreed to join the spill response effort early last week after being nudged by the lawmakers.
The EPA inspector general’s office says it will be looking into both the causes of the spill and the agency’s response afterward as part of its investigation.
EPA on Thursday said the San Juan River in New Mexico had returned to pre-spill conditions, about a week after the agency confirmed that the highest concentrations of pollutants had dissipated in the Animas River. States and others say it will take years, and potentially billions of dollars, to clean up river sediment that has absorbed the heavy metals.
