The House Natural Resources Committee released a 74-page report faulting the Environmental Protection Agency with dumping three million gallons of toxic-metal laden water into the Animas River in Colorado. Not only did the report detail the comedy of errors leading up to the moment when an EPA contractor breached a retaining wall at the Gold King Mine and the pressurized water contaminated with mercury, arsenic and lead started to flow down the hill, it accused the EPA of deceiving the American public of the extent of the EPA-caused disaster. If a private party had caused the spill, the ecofascists at the EPA would have swooped in to deal out some environmental justice. But like it did leading up to the Flint water crisis, the EPA gave itself, the government, a pass.

Research associate at the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies Katie Tubb told The Daily Signal, “Good environmental policy is primarily an issue of who is best equipped to manage the environment well. As the committee’s report illustrates, the EPA and [Department of Interior] are massive black boxes — accountability is difficult. States and local communities simply can do a better job of reflecting the environmental interests of the people impacted most and can better be held responsible by their constituents.” In the days after the yellow-orange tide flowed down the Animas, it was clear the EPA had gone into damage-control mode, as protecting the agency is its primary goal, even above protecting the environment.