Ep. 04: The Color of Poison

On the morning of August 5, 2015, an EPA contractor working at an abandoned mine in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado punched through a plug of debris and released 3 million gallons of toxic wastewater into Cement Creek—a tributary of the Animas River. Within hours, the river had turned a vivid orange. By the time the plume reached New Mexico, water intakes serving the Navajo Nation had been shut off. Farmers watched their irrigation systems go dry. Crops died in the ground.The Gold King Mine hadn't been active in decades. But abandoned hard-rock mines don't stop producing acid.This is the story of how a cleanup operation became a catastrophe, why no one was ever held criminally accountable, and what it means when the agency charged with protecting America's waterways is the one that poisons them.