EPA and Utah have agreed to settle the state's legal claims over the massive 2015 Gold King Mine wastewater spill that was set off by an agency-led cleanup project, with the agency agreeing to provide Clean Water Act (CWA) cleanup grants for affected areas and setting deadlines to begin cleanups under the Superfund program. The settlement agreement, signed Aug. 5, marks the first concrete resolution for any of the litigation EPA has faced over the Gold King spill, though claims by New Mexico, the Navaj o Nation and more than 300 individual plaintiffs remain pending in district court with the first phase of a three-part trial set for 2021. It commits EPA to approve a $2 million grant for Utah's CWA section 106 water quality standards program alongside a separate $1 million grant under the section 319 nonpoint source cleanup program. And the agency has until Dec. 31, 2021 to begin removal site evaluations - including preliminary cleanup assessments and inspections - at three contaminated former mine sites in Utah.
展开▼
