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A news item involving 2015 Gold King Mine waste water spill was featured on Misplaced Pages's Main Page in the In the news section on 11 August 2015.

Nominated for WP:ITN

The article has been nominated for listing at In the News on the fron page. Pleas feel free to comment at the nomination, and avoid adding any unreferenced material to the article. μηδείς (talk) 00:22, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Chart

I'd suggest not including this chart. It makes the article suddenly harder to read; the readings were taken upstream; the readings could change; the readings may be irrelevant to the main topic, the spill.

--Light show (talk) 04:08, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

The readings were taken 15 miles upstream of Durango. Silverton is about 45 miles upstream of Durango. I don't think they're irrelevant. It's true they could change, although they will probably decrease.

I don't like stressing "times over limit"; I think it's a newsy way of getting shockingly large numbers (percents are even worse). The acceptable values for drinking water are in the ppb range, parts per billion, because drinking water shouldn't have metals in it at all. The limits are a numerical equivalent to "as close to zero as we're likely to find in natural water." Now, 1,000 ppb is 1 ppm, 1 part per million. One part per million is 0.0001%, one milligram per liter.

That doesn't mean I'd drink water with 5.7 ppm of lead, but I didn't like how the article stated "times over limit" without saying what the limit was. It's a comparison of two very small numbers, and it can be misleading to compare two very small numbers as a ratio; the numbers should be ppb. Roches (talk) 23:18, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

The other missing factor is that those regulatory limits look suspiciously like drinking-water limits and the field data are clearly whole-water, including the suspended, colored metal oxides. Filtration is the first step in treating raw water for drinking. The dissolved metal concentrations immediately thereafter will be much lower and almost certainly within limits. Treatment plants quite appropriately shut off intakes while the contaminants passed, for the good operational and business reason that they didn't want to overload their filters, but toxicity was a minor factor. Justaxn (talk) 02:12, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Color

One of the most striking characteristics of this mishap is the bright orange color. Has anyone read any explanation for the color? Is it related to the toxic materials in any way? Spiel496 (talk) 21:20, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

It certainly is related to the toxic materials. Most of the color is attributable to the iron and copper. Iron and copper can produce various reds, yellows and oranges, and the effect of mixing them is the same as mixing paints. The orange is a startling color, but it's seen in many places. See Acid mine drainage for an explanation and for other examples.

One of the characteristics of a heavily mineralized volcanic-remnant area is the presence of sulfur compounds ... they make things yellow. If you look at the tailings around gold mines and prospect holes, you'll see yellowish dirt dominates the tailings. The abandoned mine tunnels accumulated all these leached minerals that normally just flow into Cement Creek and then into the Animas. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.45.57.37 (talk) 17:27, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

The really dangerous materials like lead and cadmium are not present in a high enough concentration to affect the color. Roches (talk) 23:31, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Roches, that was helpful. I think including a sentence and link in the article would be good. For example, "The orange color in mine discharge is due to precipitates of iron hydroxide and other minerals associated with the acidic chemistry within the mine." Just something to indicate that the color is one of many things going on, and does not itself reveal the toxicity. In fact, non-soluble stuff like that should be of least concern, right? Spiel496 (talk) 00:39, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Though a large part of it is likely the metals, in part its probably the muds, and other sediments that accumulated in the tailing ponds, beside just the metal. If you have ever seen pictures of areas with red clay after construction, and during a heavy rain: the rivers can get quite reddie/brown. Sadads (talk) 00:00, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Sandip Hazra, Bron In kolkata India, — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.163.80.78 (talk) 05:22, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Employees or contractors?

When I saw this article yesterday the lead stated the spill was caused by employees of the EPA. Now it states it was a contractor. Is there a good source for this? It's a relatively subtle change but significant, especially given how the disaster is being used by some to argue that the EPA as a whole is ineffective. If the accident itself was caused by a contractor, this may imply lesser fault on the part of the EPA itself. Vox and the Daily Caller mention contractors, but the EPA's own press release just states that "EPA was conducting an investigation" with no mention of contractors. 2601:644:101:9616:6886:8CA2:7E6F:1E1F (talk) 16:17, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

I have changed it to "workers" until their is a clear consensus, we might want to footnote this, until its clarified (investigation maybe?), Sadads (talk) 16:22, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Missouri based Environmental Restoration LLC is the contractor involved causing this spill. 74.61.107.101 (talk) 22:46, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Disaster?

Despite the excitement in media, this is an incident, not an environmental disaster. Perhaps we should tone it down a little. Justaxn (talk) 16:24, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

@Justaxn:It is when several states declare "disaster" status for the event; it might be considered hype in some circles, but we don't have sources that are challenged that assessment by states. Sadads (talk) 16:27, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

@Sadads:The cases listed in Environmental disaster have 10's to 1,000's of immediate fatalities. Here we have undefined possible consequences in the indefinite future. Acid mine drainage is a bit like climate change—quite serious but incrementally small. This incident is an increment.Justaxn (talk) 19:44, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Original Research

I made a large removal of content here . It looks like it was produced by a subject-matter expert but was original research. The policy that applies is WP:SYNTHESIS. For the record I think the content is factual, but unusable due to policy. Geogene (talk) 18:53, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

The only OR is the conversion of 3 million gallons into a proportion of streamflow nearby. That's little different than a Convert template. Every other statement is fully cited, so I restored it. More details, please, if we are to generate consensus to remove. Justaxn (talk) 19:44, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

@Geogene: What OR synthesis do you read in the paragraph? I don't see it.Justaxn (talk) 19:51, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Stream conditions temporarily returned to those that had been common 20 years earlier. citation to a USGS open file report from 2005. Geogene (talk) 20:29, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Restated the sentence and moved it to end of paragraph for less emphasis. The citation now clearly refers to earlier conditions, not a claim that it interprets the present. Please ping me again if this does not satisfy the concern. Justaxn (talk) 01:49, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

@Justaxn:No amount of re-wording will fix this. Geogene (talk) 17:11, 13 August 2015 (UTC) Nevermind, I see somebody else got it. Geogene (talk) 17:13, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Accident cause

Perhaps a section describing how the accident occurred might be useful....--108.51.236.225 (talk) 04:46, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Good idea, but having taken another look at the article after reading your suggestion, I think the description is in fact sufficient. The article tells us who made the mistake and what they were trying to do when it happened, and as far as I'm aware, that's about all we know. If you find reliable sources that tell us more, or would prefer to consolidate all this information into a separate section, go right ahead. Riverhugger (talk) 14:36, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

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