Solution Found to Colorado River Spill Disaster

Solution Found - Technology Available to Clean Up EPA Contamination Disaster of the Animas River in Colorado

According to the EPA, the spill occurred this past week, when one of its clean-up teams was using heavy equipment to enter the Gold King Mine, which is a suspended mine near the town of Durango. The team planned to enter the mine and beginning the process of pumping and treating the contaminated water inside. Instead, they accidentally caused it to flow into the nearby Animas River.

While the levels of contamination and the damage that will result are still being analyzed, the size of the spill is now known. The U.S. Geological Survey has recently reported the size of the spill to be more than 3 million gallons, three times the initial EPA estimate of 1 million gallons.

As for the contaminants, the spill carried heavy metals -- mainly iron, zinc and copper -- from the mine into a creek that feeds into the Animas. The spill has caused a spike in concentrations of total and dissolved metals in the water, the EPA said. EPA sampling has shown levels of lead, arsenic, beryllium, cadmium and mercury were extremely high compared with acceptable levels set by the agency. One of the samples of mercury was nearly 10 times higher than the acceptable EPA levels. Samples of beryllium and cadmium were 33 times higher, and one of the arsenic levels was more than 800 times higher than acceptable. "These levels are shocking," says Max Costa, chair of the department of environmental medicine at New York University School of Medicine.

The focus is now squarely on clean up. A state of emergency was declared by Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, which allocated$500,000 from the state's disaster emergency fund to pay for assessment and to fund initial response efforts. "Our priority remains to ensure public safety and minimize environmental impacts," said Hickenlooper.

As agencies scramble to find a suitable clean-up solution for the contaminated water, one group believes their technology is the answer. "Our combined technologies could not be more perfectly suited for this application," states Michael Mills, head of Modern Mining Solutions LLC, (MMS) an advanced technology development firm from Nevada. Modern Mining Solutions, in cooperation with technology partners Recovery Energy, Inc.(REI) and Ferrate Treatment Technologies, LLC (FTT) have collaborated to create a water purification system that they claim can not only clean up spills of this sort, but a host of other environmental disasters as well. "Our system cost effectively treats and removes heavy metals, various chemicals, biochemicals (BOD's), chemical oxygen demands (COD's), dissolved solids, hydrocarbons and a long list of other contaminants" said Mills.

How does this technology work? The water and any dredged material is treated with a patented ferrate process. Ferrate is a powerful, high valence iron molecule (FeO4)2- that oxidizes chemicals, disinfects pathogens and scale causing organisms, and co-precipitates dissolved and particulate metals. The treated contaminants are bound with the iron, which makes them heavier than water so they will settle out. The treated material then goes through a patented gravity separator that can remove very fine particles and separates material that is either heavier or lighter than water. Heavy material comes out the bottom, light material out the top. The solids that are removed are inert. According to Luke Daly, CEO of FTT, "The ferrate treatment process has already been proven to be the most environmentally friendly and lowest cost method for treating municipal drinking water in a recent EPA report titled, Environmental and Cost Life Cycle Assessment of Disinfection Options for Municipal Drinking Water Treatment. 

Source: PRNewsWire

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