Emails show peer reviewer ‘not happy’ with Interior Dept.’s report on Gold King Mine spill

The federal engineer charged with reviewing the Interior Department’s report on the Gold King Mine spill said he had misgivings about it but felt under pressure to sign off, according to emails released this week.

“I’m not happy with the report,” said Richard Olsen, senior geotechnical engineer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), in an Oct. 14 email released by the House Committee on Natural Resources.

The emails, obtained by the committee as part of its investigation into the Aug. 5 spill caused by an Environmental Protection Agency-led crew, show that Mr. Olsen was troubled by what he called the “limited scope” of the technical evaluation released Oct. 22 by the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation.

“I don’t really want to sign off on the report (which they want),” said Mr. Olsen, the report’s peer reviewer.

He said the report “in concept is an independent investigation of a failure,” but that it “reads like an internal investigation of a failure.”

Mr. Olsen also implied that the department may have been too close to the EPA to conduct a truly independent probe, saying, “The issue is that they work a lot with EPA on mining issues.”

The email, part of a chain of communications generated by Mr. Olsen and other officials from Aug. 20 to Oct. 14, was obtained under a Feb. 17 subpoena issued by the committee to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell.

Mr. Olsen ultimately signed off on the report, but only after Interior officials agreed to place his objections in the executive summary.

The report said that he had “serious reservations” about the scope of the review, including questions over why there was an “urgency to start digging” even though a previous EPA coordinator had raised red flags.

In another Oct. 14 email, Mr. Olsen said he could not agree with the statement, “The results, findings, and recommendations provided in this Technical Evaluation of the Gold King Mine Incident are technically sound and consistent with current professional practice.”

Said Mr. Olsen, “My single simple answer is no. This will place me on a slipper[y] path, but it’s good for USACE because we must act and perform as the government experts.”

The technical evaluation concluded that the 3 million-gallon spill could have been avoided had the crew checked the water level before digging out debris plugging the inactive mine near Silverton, Colorado.

While Mr. Olsen said he agreed with the report’s explanation of the “reason for the failure,” he added that, “the discussions and involvement of people a month before and up to the day of the failure does not read good.”

Republicans on the House Committee on Natural Resources have accused the Obama administration of failing to hold accountable those responsible for the spill, which sent toxic wastewater down the Animas and San Juan rivers and into three states.

Chairman Rob Bishop has also referred to a “pattern of deception on the part of the EPA and DOI,” while administration officials insist they have cooperated with the committee’s investigation.

“We have been responsive to the Committee’s requests on this issue since August by providing Secretarial testimony, Committee staff briefings and thousands of pages of documents,” said the Interior Department in a Feb. 17 statement. “Interior is willing to continue to work to accommodate the Committee’s oversight interest but given our level of cooperation to date, we believe that a subpoena is premature.”