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The Gold King Mine spill released about three million gallons of toxic water into the Animas River in 2015. It flowed downstream into the San Juan River.
Mining in the West often results in polluted watersheds, but a new study shows efforts to clean up leaking mines are extremely effective.
Researchers from Colorado State University, the University of California Santa Barbara and the U.S. Geological Survey worked on the study, which
The streams were all designated by the Environmental Protection Agency as Superfund sites, which means they were extremely polluted.
“They started off as being, if not devoid of life, pretty close to that,” said Will Clements, one of the researchers. “And then in a fairly short period of time, 10 to 15 years, they all had made this remarkable recovery.”