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Blaming the EPA for an incident that happened at a horribly toxic mine is like blaming your doctor for your gall bladder exploding while it was being removed for being infectious.

The EPA is in charge of these horrible mines because the previous owners abandoned them to destroy the environment after the profitable stuff was pulled out of the ground.

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Cool, so absolve the EPA of any wrong doing?

No. But that specific failure is not an inherent indictment of the mission of the EPA, itself.

That mine is an environmental disaster. Some entity needs to be tasked with containing it or mitigating it--doing nothing is NOT an option. That failure could have occurred whether the mine was under the auspices of the EPA, the Department of the Interior, or the Army Corps of Engineers.

This isn't how we talk on HN.

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