More than a week later and despite a 4,000 mile round-trip from Washington, DC, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy admits to reporters in Colorado that she hasn’t visited the Gold King Mine disaster site. Administrator McCarthy: ‘As you know it’s a significant distance away, but I did visit the river’.
AP REPORTER: “Have you been to the mine in your visit so far and do you plan, if not, are you going to visit the mine?”
ADMINISTRATOR GINA MCCARTHY: “Well the most important thing for this trip was for me to actually come to the Unified Command Center to meet with the governors or whoever would like to meet, local community representatives, so that we can make sure that their needs are being met. That is my first order of business. I did not go to the mine. As you know it’s a significant distance away, but I did visit the river and I took a look at it myself. I wanted to get a sense of the river and I think that the good news is that it seems to be restoring itself but we have continued work to do and EPA is here today. And, just because I’m not here it doesn’t mean you don’t have experts, actually more than a hundred experts right here as well as additional folks, hundreds of them back at EPA working this issue with our federal and state and local partners and tribal partners.”
Durango, Colorado
August 12, 2015
