Comment by mikeyouse | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikeyouse | Hacker News Reader

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To be clear - in that example, a river was polluted by waste that a negligent private company had gathered for decades and then abandoned in an uncapped gold mine -- the EPA was only involved because they were cleaning up what was already a nightmare of pollution. The spill which accidentally released 100k tons of acidic water mixed with mining tails into the river was proceeded by the owners of that mine intentionally releasing over four million tons of actual tailings as part of their regular operating procedures.

The EPA and other orgs are responsible for the cleanup of thousands of polluted areas and superfund sites created by negligent businesses who wantonly polluted and then abandoned their responsibilities leaving it up to their kids and their kids' kids to clean it up.

It's like blaming the dentist for scratching your gums while repairing a cavity. A big dose of, "Well sure, but if you had listened to them in the first place.. "

> It's like blaming the dentist for scratching your gums while repairing a cavity. A big dose of, "Well sure, but if you had listened to them in the first place.. "

Terrible analogy. The EPA knew there was heavy contamination in that mine, and yet decided to drill into the side of the mountain regardless knowing full well the implications of the heavy water getting released. There were other ways they could have gone about measuring and keeping tabs on the toxic build up. Yet they chose the most expedient riskiest solution that backfired spectacularly.

In your analogy, this is akin to the dentist taking a 1/4 inch drill bit to the side of your tooth to measure the cavity damage and spilling about a pint of blood on the floor in the process.

Even if the EPA were negligent in its handling of the operation, fixating on that does seem to miss the point that they were only in that position because a private company created it and left it for someone else to handle. That's also the point you're missing from the analogy.

I don't think it's unexpected that an agency in charge of cleanups like this is going to have some blunders. Should they have handled it better? Fine. But that's not much of a statement.

I think you'd have to make a claim about the EPA's net impact/value to say something interesting here.

The EPA screwed up and basically instead of the acidic water slowly leaking out they caused it burst open and dump all of it in the span of days. There is no disputing that fact.

But interesting, the mine wasn't polluted in the sense of the company dumped chemicals. The mining process simply exposed rock that when it reacts with water, turns acidic. It's a natural process that is simply amplified by the mining process.

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