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River of Lost Souls: The Science, Politics, and Greed Behind the Gold King Mine Disaster
Award-winning investigative environmental journalist Jonathan P. Thompson digs into the science, politics, and greed behind the 2015 Gold King Mine disaster, and unearths a litany of impacts wrought by a century and a half of mining, energy development, and fracking in southwestern Colorado. Amid these harsh realities, Thompson explores how a new generation is setting out to make amends.
As shocking and heartbreaking as the Gold King spill and its aftermath may be, it's merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The disaster itself was the climax of the long and troubled story of the Gold King mine, staked by a Swedish immigrant back in 1887. And it was only the most visible manifestation of a slow-moving, multi-faceted environmental catastrophe that had been unfolding here long before the events of August 5, 2015.
Jonathan Thompson is a native Westerner with deep roots in southwestern Colorado. He has been an environmental journalist focusing on the American West since he signed on as reporter and photographer at the Silverton Standard & the Miner newspaper in 1996. He has worked and written for High Country News for over a decade, serving as editor-in-chief from 2007 to 2010. He was a Ted Scripps fellow in environmental journalism at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and in 2016 he was awarded the Society of Environmental Journalists' Outstanding Beat Reporting, Small Market. He currently lives in Bulgaria with his wife Wendy and daughters Lydia and Elena.
As shocking and heartbreaking as the Gold King spill and its aftermath may be, it's merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The disaster itself was the climax of the long and troubled story of the Gold King mine, staked by a Swedish immigrant back in 1887. And it was only the most visible manifestation of a slow-moving, multi-faceted environmental catastrophe that had been unfolding here long before the events of August 5, 2015.
Jonathan Thompson is a native Westerner with deep roots in southwestern Colorado. He has been an environmental journalist focusing on the American West since he signed on as reporter and photographer at the Silverton Standard & the Miner newspaper in 1996. He has worked and written for High Country News for over a decade, serving as editor-in-chief from 2007 to 2010. He was a Ted Scripps fellow in environmental journalism at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and in 2016 he was awarded the Society of Environmental Journalists' Outstanding Beat Reporting, Small Market. He currently lives in Bulgaria with his wife Wendy and daughters Lydia and Elena.
335 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 13, 2018
About the author
Jonathan P. Thompson
2 books15 followersWhen the river that his ancestors had settled next to in the 1870s turned orange with mining-related pollution in 2015, Jonathan Thompson knew he would write a book about it. After all, he had been researching the core issue — pollution from extractive industries — for most of his 20 years as a journalist. He worked at and then owned the Silverton Standard & the Miner newspaper over the course of a decade. Then in 2005 he hired on at High Country News, an independent magazine covering the issues of the American West, where he has served as associate editor, editor-in-chief, senior editor, and is now a contributing editor and writer. Thompson received his Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and Mathematics at St. Johns College in Santa Fe, was a Ted Scripps Fellow at the Center for Environmental Journalism at University of Colorado, Boulder, and has also worked as an artisan baker, bike mechanic, janitor, and seed-germination technician. He currently splits his time between Colorado and Bulgaria with his wife Wendy and daughters Lydia and Elena.
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February 17, 2019
I am a fan of micro-history and books on the environment. I am also a Colorado native and have visited the half a dozen towns highlighted in this book so I have some frame of reference. River of Lost Souls is ostensibly about the Gold King Mine Disaster from August 5, 2015 that dumped three million gallons of mine waste tailings, an incredibly toxic stew, into the Animas River upstream from Durango Colorado. The images of the resulting toxic orange river were broadcast around the world. It is not hard to understand the short term impacts. All of the fish in the river were killed for a hundred miles downstream as the ph levels plummeted. But the author doesn’t delve too deeply into the science. The book is really about more than the ecological impact and the science around it, it is about exploring life in the region and the history that led to the environmental problems.
The author of this book, Jonathan P. Thompson, is a journalist of some twenty years from nearby Silverton and he grew up along the Animas River. He has written many environmental articles about mining prior to the spill. The spill, for those who don’t know, was caused while the E.P.A. was trying to mitigate pollutants and investigate recent toxic drainage, just a trickle compared to the accident, from the abandoned 1923 Gold King Mine.
This book also covers the author’s own experiences growing up in the area. The science of hard rock mining, as a whole, could have been explained better, a map of the area would have been useful and the book is a bit disjointed and has a journalistic feel because many of the author’s prior articles were used as source material.
This story looks to be a labor of love and is written by an author who is knowledgeable about the environment in the San Juan region and the impacts downriver to Farmington NM. He does an excellent job of transporting the reader to this milieu and also in providing a solid background to the disaster. I wish more books of this quality were written on local environmental issues.
4.5 stars.
The author of this book, Jonathan P. Thompson, is a journalist of some twenty years from nearby Silverton and he grew up along the Animas River. He has written many environmental articles about mining prior to the spill. The spill, for those who don’t know, was caused while the E.P.A. was trying to mitigate pollutants and investigate recent toxic drainage, just a trickle compared to the accident, from the abandoned 1923 Gold King Mine.
This book also covers the author’s own experiences growing up in the area. The science of hard rock mining, as a whole, could have been explained better, a map of the area would have been useful and the book is a bit disjointed and has a journalistic feel because many of the author’s prior articles were used as source material.
This story looks to be a labor of love and is written by an author who is knowledgeable about the environment in the San Juan region and the impacts downriver to Farmington NM. He does an excellent job of transporting the reader to this milieu and also in providing a solid background to the disaster. I wish more books of this quality were written on local environmental issues.
4.5 stars.
April 2, 2018
There are all sorts of videos plastered all over YouTube so it doesn’t take much to get an idea of the environmental tragedy that was the Gold King disaster back in August of 2015. There is even a video of the initial moments when a trickle of toxic sludge turned into a roaring river as the workers’ cries (in the EPA video) are bleeped out. “What do we do now?” one worker asks. “Get a little video of this I suppose.”
Yes, get a little video. Soon, the images of The Animas River turned burnt orange would be plastered all over national news—the snaking ribbons of water carrying millions of gallons of dangerous chemicals for hundreds of miles downstream.
Ironically, it was contractors for the Environmental Protection Agency who accidentally destroyed the plug holding the water trapped inside the mine. The mishap sent three million gallons of poisonous water down the valley. The name of the contractor company was Environmental Restoration. (Um, not so much.) The water and tailings that poured from the dormant mine down Cement Creek and then into the Animas River contained arsenic, cadmium, lead, beryllium, iron, and copper—a stew of trouble.
Using this touchstone event as a springboard, Jonathan P. Thompson has written "River of Lost Souls: The Science, Politics, and Greed Behind the Gold King Mine Disaster." Thompson’s account is part personal narrative, part historical exploration, and part investigative reporting. Most of the book ventures away from Gold King itself to set the context and backdrop for the disaster itself.
Thompson’s keen knowledge of the mining community gives "River of Lost Souls" a visceral feel. Thompson was a reporter and photographer for two newspapers in tiny Silverton, the small mountain community 10 miles down the valley from the mine itself, and he spent part of his youth in Durango, another 50 miles downstream. His family’s roots go back over a century to Ouray and Silverton, too.
Thompson was in Durango on the day of the blowout. “Turbid, electric-orange water, utterly opaque, sprawls out between the sandy banks, as iron hydroxide particles thicken within the current like psychedelic smoke … Within a few hours, the river through town is empty, an eerie sight on a hot August afternoon. The bridges across the river, on the other hand, are crowded with people milling about, waiting for the slow-motion disaster to unfurl in the dark green water below them … People are angry, sad, and befuddled.”
The recriminations continue. If the owner of the Gold King mine can be believed, the possibility of a similar event is possible if the neighboring Sunnyside Mine, on the other side of Bonita Peak, also blows out. Similar, that is, but ten times more harmful. The lawsuits, the damage claims, the proposals for legislative fixes are still churning three years later. (We’ve probably only just begun on sorting out the fallout).
So how did we get here? Thompson goes back. He dives deep into the early settlers—ancestors of today’s Hopi and Zuni, Spanish explorers, then the 19th Century silver rush and so on. He digs into the history of tensions between miners and the downstream property owners (like farmers and, well, all people) who depend on untainted water.
Thompson looks at the pollution from the Four Corners Power Plant, the environmental mess left behind by the old Durango smelter, and related disasters and near-disasters around the American West. At every turn, Thompson unravels the complicated legal and political tangles that allow companies permission to let those downstream or downwind deal with their waste and particulates and poisons. Yes, some waters must be sacrificed. Too bad.
A longtime reporter for High Country News, Thompson knows the region well, not only the environmental issues and challenges but the ever-changing connection between the economy and what the land has to offer. A major subplot involves the rising and falling fortunes of Silverton, both mining base camp for over a century and, more recently, kitschy tourist trap for day-trippers on the narrow gauge railroad that runs up the valley from downtown Durango.
There are many “bottom lines” to the Gold King mess, but Thompson makes it clear that the tangle of bureaucracies, mine ownership and public sentiment is as tangled and dark as the labyrinth of tunnels under Bonita Peak. One issue is to make the clean up of acid waters a priority. The natural drainage of the area, given the underground minerals, produces imperfect water. “Acid mine drainage is too complicated and subtle to be a sexy environmental topic, at least until disaster strikes,” writes Thompson, “so it’s hard to get people to rally around it.”
Gold King may have changed that—or maybe not. Now that the site has earned Superfund status, will the issue revert to the background for another few decades? Will it prompt new regulations for mine owners going forward? Will mine owners ever be held accountable for the full costs of their explorations? (And would consumers be willing to pay for those costs of goods if they were?)
Written with the knack of a sharp story teller, "River of Lost Souls" is hardly an environmentalists’ screed. Thompson sees the layers and understands the politics. He’s realistic about the future, too.
“Mining is hard,” he concludes. “Putting the earth back together again afterwards is a hell of a lot harder.”
If you have any doubts about that, watch the video.
Yes, get a little video. Soon, the images of The Animas River turned burnt orange would be plastered all over national news—the snaking ribbons of water carrying millions of gallons of dangerous chemicals for hundreds of miles downstream.
Ironically, it was contractors for the Environmental Protection Agency who accidentally destroyed the plug holding the water trapped inside the mine. The mishap sent three million gallons of poisonous water down the valley. The name of the contractor company was Environmental Restoration. (Um, not so much.) The water and tailings that poured from the dormant mine down Cement Creek and then into the Animas River contained arsenic, cadmium, lead, beryllium, iron, and copper—a stew of trouble.
Using this touchstone event as a springboard, Jonathan P. Thompson has written "River of Lost Souls: The Science, Politics, and Greed Behind the Gold King Mine Disaster." Thompson’s account is part personal narrative, part historical exploration, and part investigative reporting. Most of the book ventures away from Gold King itself to set the context and backdrop for the disaster itself.
Thompson’s keen knowledge of the mining community gives "River of Lost Souls" a visceral feel. Thompson was a reporter and photographer for two newspapers in tiny Silverton, the small mountain community 10 miles down the valley from the mine itself, and he spent part of his youth in Durango, another 50 miles downstream. His family’s roots go back over a century to Ouray and Silverton, too.
Thompson was in Durango on the day of the blowout. “Turbid, electric-orange water, utterly opaque, sprawls out between the sandy banks, as iron hydroxide particles thicken within the current like psychedelic smoke … Within a few hours, the river through town is empty, an eerie sight on a hot August afternoon. The bridges across the river, on the other hand, are crowded with people milling about, waiting for the slow-motion disaster to unfurl in the dark green water below them … People are angry, sad, and befuddled.”
The recriminations continue. If the owner of the Gold King mine can be believed, the possibility of a similar event is possible if the neighboring Sunnyside Mine, on the other side of Bonita Peak, also blows out. Similar, that is, but ten times more harmful. The lawsuits, the damage claims, the proposals for legislative fixes are still churning three years later. (We’ve probably only just begun on sorting out the fallout).
So how did we get here? Thompson goes back. He dives deep into the early settlers—ancestors of today’s Hopi and Zuni, Spanish explorers, then the 19th Century silver rush and so on. He digs into the history of tensions between miners and the downstream property owners (like farmers and, well, all people) who depend on untainted water.
Thompson looks at the pollution from the Four Corners Power Plant, the environmental mess left behind by the old Durango smelter, and related disasters and near-disasters around the American West. At every turn, Thompson unravels the complicated legal and political tangles that allow companies permission to let those downstream or downwind deal with their waste and particulates and poisons. Yes, some waters must be sacrificed. Too bad.
A longtime reporter for High Country News, Thompson knows the region well, not only the environmental issues and challenges but the ever-changing connection between the economy and what the land has to offer. A major subplot involves the rising and falling fortunes of Silverton, both mining base camp for over a century and, more recently, kitschy tourist trap for day-trippers on the narrow gauge railroad that runs up the valley from downtown Durango.
There are many “bottom lines” to the Gold King mess, but Thompson makes it clear that the tangle of bureaucracies, mine ownership and public sentiment is as tangled and dark as the labyrinth of tunnels under Bonita Peak. One issue is to make the clean up of acid waters a priority. The natural drainage of the area, given the underground minerals, produces imperfect water. “Acid mine drainage is too complicated and subtle to be a sexy environmental topic, at least until disaster strikes,” writes Thompson, “so it’s hard to get people to rally around it.”
Gold King may have changed that—or maybe not. Now that the site has earned Superfund status, will the issue revert to the background for another few decades? Will it prompt new regulations for mine owners going forward? Will mine owners ever be held accountable for the full costs of their explorations? (And would consumers be willing to pay for those costs of goods if they were?)
Written with the knack of a sharp story teller, "River of Lost Souls" is hardly an environmentalists’ screed. Thompson sees the layers and understands the politics. He’s realistic about the future, too.
“Mining is hard,” he concludes. “Putting the earth back together again afterwards is a hell of a lot harder.”
If you have any doubts about that, watch the video.
August 22, 2018
For all the drama of the Tang-hued sludge hurtled through the tourist town of Durango and points south, the Gold King mine disaster merely sent forth a sudden burst of accumulated everyday pollution.
So it's appropriate that Jonathan P. Thompson spends much of River of Lost Souls: The Science, Politics, and Greed Behind the Gold King Mine Disaster telling us about all the many factors surrounding (not just "behind") the headline leak that brought unfortunate attention to Southwest Colorado's Animas River in 2015.
For a reader of High Country News, where Thompson did excellent reporting on the disaster, much of the immediate story is familiar: How the leak occurred; the impacts downstream; the tangled layers of responsibility; the conflicts between mining- and tourism-based economies sharing the territory; and the community ambivalence about how to conduct a cleanup.
But there's much more here that will appeal to general readers about the environment and the West. It's a story engagingly told in relatively short chapters that read like related articles in a good magazine rather than a political or scientific tome marching straight toward a stern conclusion.
I began reading this book on an airplane, and I commented on it to my wife so often that a woman in the row behind us leaned in to ask what I was reading.
For those of us who treasure the land, it is tempting to rail against hard rock mining and the mistakes of past mine owners, but it's more nuanced to acknowledge some of these mistakes were general to the times. Yes, there was greed and carelessness, but not always and not universally.
For those tempted to blame the EPA and its contractors, River of Lost Souls makes clear the 2015 spill was the inevitable product of a century's best guesses, misjudgments, blind eyes, and corporate shortcuts and shenanigans that might have been moderated by more foresighted mining laws and regulation.
At the same, the pollution from mining in that area is to some extent an acceleration of natural processes. Even with no history of mining, the streams of the Animas valley tended to be naturally acidic and sometimes downright nasty. Thompson points out the irony of trying to restore water and aquatic life to some pristine quality that may not have existed in pre-mining days.
Waterways provided power for mines and mills. They also served conveniently as sewers. Mining companies were historically quick to invest in technology to increase output, but loath to spend anything on even low-tech holding ponds to mitigate their pollution.
"Sure, we poison the water, but we provide jobs" has been the extractive industry mantra forever, and is merely more sophisticated today. The new EPA mission is being reconfigured to enable industry rather than to protect health and conserve the earth. Environmentalists now need to fight harder than ever to avoid future Gold Kings.
If there is a silver lining to the Gold King cloud, it's that the river is not dead yet, despite cleanup efforts that at first seemed groundbreaking and then turned out not to be. Thompson shows us the remarkable resilience of the earth when left to its own natural devices.
As the one experienced reporter who didn't need to helicopter in to witness the flow of sludge, Thompson was probably born to write this book. His family had been entwined with the region for generations, and he shares the bittersweet experience of kids who grow up around earth-unfriendly industries in places like Silverton and Rocky Ford, Colorado, and Butte and Libby, Montana. Residents are more likely to recall the beauty of the land than to be aware of the industrial processes and economic forces turning their playgrounds into sacrifice zones.
Thompson thus brings a nuanced view to the disaster—not just seeing the greed, waste and immediate carnage, but appreciating that geology ultimately dictates how all creatures can live on the land, despite mankind's supposed dominion over it.
Thompson has not skated along on his local knowledge and past reporting. He repeatedly and effectively brings historical human color to the story of the land—from early native peoples to latter day ski bums. Though Thompson's personal experiences add another intimate human layer, at times, he comes close to over-sharing. And while his explanations of mining practices and chemical processes are illuminating, he must have gotten tired of having to list so many long strings of pollutants.
Risking losing us with such details shows the seriousness of this effort and the respect he has for the many points of view. If anything, his account illuminates the issues in a way that even the villains might feel they were given a fair shake.
So it's appropriate that Jonathan P. Thompson spends much of River of Lost Souls: The Science, Politics, and Greed Behind the Gold King Mine Disaster telling us about all the many factors surrounding (not just "behind") the headline leak that brought unfortunate attention to Southwest Colorado's Animas River in 2015.
For a reader of High Country News, where Thompson did excellent reporting on the disaster, much of the immediate story is familiar: How the leak occurred; the impacts downstream; the tangled layers of responsibility; the conflicts between mining- and tourism-based economies sharing the territory; and the community ambivalence about how to conduct a cleanup.
But there's much more here that will appeal to general readers about the environment and the West. It's a story engagingly told in relatively short chapters that read like related articles in a good magazine rather than a political or scientific tome marching straight toward a stern conclusion.
I began reading this book on an airplane, and I commented on it to my wife so often that a woman in the row behind us leaned in to ask what I was reading.
For those of us who treasure the land, it is tempting to rail against hard rock mining and the mistakes of past mine owners, but it's more nuanced to acknowledge some of these mistakes were general to the times. Yes, there was greed and carelessness, but not always and not universally.
For those tempted to blame the EPA and its contractors, River of Lost Souls makes clear the 2015 spill was the inevitable product of a century's best guesses, misjudgments, blind eyes, and corporate shortcuts and shenanigans that might have been moderated by more foresighted mining laws and regulation.
At the same, the pollution from mining in that area is to some extent an acceleration of natural processes. Even with no history of mining, the streams of the Animas valley tended to be naturally acidic and sometimes downright nasty. Thompson points out the irony of trying to restore water and aquatic life to some pristine quality that may not have existed in pre-mining days.
Waterways provided power for mines and mills. They also served conveniently as sewers. Mining companies were historically quick to invest in technology to increase output, but loath to spend anything on even low-tech holding ponds to mitigate their pollution.
"Sure, we poison the water, but we provide jobs" has been the extractive industry mantra forever, and is merely more sophisticated today. The new EPA mission is being reconfigured to enable industry rather than to protect health and conserve the earth. Environmentalists now need to fight harder than ever to avoid future Gold Kings.
If there is a silver lining to the Gold King cloud, it's that the river is not dead yet, despite cleanup efforts that at first seemed groundbreaking and then turned out not to be. Thompson shows us the remarkable resilience of the earth when left to its own natural devices.
As the one experienced reporter who didn't need to helicopter in to witness the flow of sludge, Thompson was probably born to write this book. His family had been entwined with the region for generations, and he shares the bittersweet experience of kids who grow up around earth-unfriendly industries in places like Silverton and Rocky Ford, Colorado, and Butte and Libby, Montana. Residents are more likely to recall the beauty of the land than to be aware of the industrial processes and economic forces turning their playgrounds into sacrifice zones.
Thompson thus brings a nuanced view to the disaster—not just seeing the greed, waste and immediate carnage, but appreciating that geology ultimately dictates how all creatures can live on the land, despite mankind's supposed dominion over it.
Thompson has not skated along on his local knowledge and past reporting. He repeatedly and effectively brings historical human color to the story of the land—from early native peoples to latter day ski bums. Though Thompson's personal experiences add another intimate human layer, at times, he comes close to over-sharing. And while his explanations of mining practices and chemical processes are illuminating, he must have gotten tired of having to list so many long strings of pollutants.
Risking losing us with such details shows the seriousness of this effort and the respect he has for the many points of view. If anything, his account illuminates the issues in a way that even the villains might feel they were given a fair shake.
March 19, 2018
I enjoyed this book. The author, who grew up near Durango, incorporated his first hand observations not just of the environmental issues but the culture of the area. I particularly appreciated the many histoical anecdotes concerning outlaws, clashes with the Utes, grizzly bears, fisheries in various streams and early mining efforts. Thompson is a skilled writer who manages to weave history into some thorny ecological concerns in a way that makes for an entertaing read. His voice comes across as "folksy" yet sophisticated and knowing. Definitely a good read. (less)
July 5, 2018
Fantastic!
Having lived in the San Juans for many years, I found this book to be one of the most interesting in its approach to mining in the area. Really got to the soul of the people who live there and the complexities of the issue. I lived in Telluride. They did allow a Superfund designation for their mining waste. Didnt hurt tourism a bit. Sometimes you have to take a larger look and not live in the past.
Having lived in the San Juans for many years, I found this book to be one of the most interesting in its approach to mining in the area. Really got to the soul of the people who live there and the complexities of the issue. I lived in Telluride. They did allow a Superfund designation for their mining waste. Didnt hurt tourism a bit. Sometimes you have to take a larger look and not live in the past.
November 5, 2018
Such an amazing historical journey! Our little Caldera is a geological and historical puzzle, and Jonathan pulls the reader on the path towards unraveling the answers and all the other mysteries hidden under the rock.
March 31, 2018
I loved reading this. It is not just about the Gold King Mine; it is a much broader story. Thompson combines personal memoir with history of Silverton and the Animas River valley more broadly. I learned a lot. If you read it, note that he has provided helpful supplementary materials (maps etc) on his website; my only complaint about the book is that some of these should have been included directly.
August 3, 2018
Interesting. I never knew how insane the lack of enviromental control existed in the west; the decision in early mining that profits absolutely came before people, and still does. Excellent history of the area; well worth the read.
October 8, 2018
A bit of history and chemistry and autobiography in a very readable, good book.
February 4, 2026
I think the name of this book is misleading because it is about so much more than the Gold King Mine disaster. Jonathan Thompson is an investigative environmental journalist and a sixth generation local to the Durango area. His book is part memoir, part investigative reporting, and part geology, chemistry and history of southwest Colorado leading up to gold and silver mining. Then the water quality troubles arise, along with corporate greed, the failings of mines ( including the Gold King mine that turned the Animas River orange ) and struggles of local economies. I highly recommend this book.
November 4, 2022
I found this book as I was looking for another at the library. Something about the cover made me take it from the shelf and read the prologue. It captured me from the the second page...
"Bonita Peak rises up just above the center of the caldera. Piles of yellow-ochre earth that look like a giant gopher colony cling to the slope here and there, the remnants of mining prospect holes and piles of waste rock mined from the earth years ago.
One of those piles, on the morning of August 5, a yellow CAT excavator paws gingerly and jerkily at dirt and tundra as workers in orange hard hats and neon-green vests watch. At approximately ten-thirty AM a stream of water spurts from where the excavator digs. It looks a lot like that opening scene in the Beverly Hillbillies when Jed strikes oil with a gunshot to the ground, only this isn't oil and it doesn't even look like water--it's bright orange. The excavator operator pulls away from the slope. One of the workers pulls out his phone and starts filming.
Within minutes, the little spout grows into a fountain and then a roiling torrent of thick, Tang-colored water. As the workers look on, stunned, the water roars over the edge of the mine waste-rock dump, carrying tons of the metal-laden material with it, crashing into the gently gurgling stream of the north fork of Cement Creek, far below, but not before a fair amount of it inundates one of the work vehicles, a black Suburban, filling it up with orange muck.
'Should we get out of here?' one worried worker asks.
'Oh, he's going to be pissed,' another answers. 'This isn't good.'
'What do we do now?' someone else asks, shocked yet oddly calm, as though a household plumbing project had gone awry.
The workers are staffers and contractors with the EPA who, in the moments before the catastrophe, were investigating the Level 7 portal of the Gold King Mine, which ad been drilled into the side of Bonita Peak back in 1900. The agency will later estimate that 3 million gallons of water--enough to fill four and a half Olympic-sized swimming pools, or to supply 21 families for a year--blasted out of the mine over the course of minutes. Only this isn't just water. It carries with it some 880,000 pounds of metals: zinc, cadmium, aluminum, arsenic, and mostly iron hydroxides, giving it the electric-orange color that will captivate and horrify onlookers near and far. It has been backing up underground behind debris for years, the pressure building, until, finally , on a sunny day in August, a heavy equipment operator facilitates its escape."
And so begins an environmental disaster that flows into the nearby Animas River, and 45 miles downstream, flows to the Colorado town of Durango (from which it takes its drinking water) and eventually into communities that draw water for drinking and for crops.
The author grew up in the area, and knew of its mining history, not a pretty picture, for which many myriad companies have denied responsibility. The history is long, and many have died in mining accidents, and I found myself shaking my head at learning of mining sites having been closed, only to be bought up again and renewed for additional mining. He ties his own story of growing up on the shores of the Animas River, playing in it, never wondering why it smelled, or its color was off.
"Acid mine drainage spews into western watersheds daily from thousands of abandoned hardrock, coal, and uranium mines. It amounts to a round-the-clock defilement of aquatic ecosystems. Yet except on rare occasions--such as when three million gallons of it got backed up in the Gold King Mine, then came blasting out over just a few hours--acid mine drainage is invisible, and goes mostly unnoticed. When mines are active in a region, however, a far more apparent form of pollution, mill tailings, or slimes, can cause even more damage--call it acid mine drainage, supersized."
The history of the mining in the area and environmental damages are extensively written about, often in terms of health issues of people who live in the area. It makes you wonder why people stay.
But the book comes alive when he writes about his childhood...
"And sometimes, especially in the spring after the first cutting of hay, the smell and the light ignite a conflagration of images in my mind, of sensations of the Farm: The way the tiny droplets of water condensed on the side of the metal ice cram container; it is the way the apples hung so heavy on the trees in the autumn when we drove underneath in the old white pickup and shook the fruit off to be ground up then pressed in the old cider press; it is the feeling of comfort hiding between rows of corn, the red dirt warm underneath; the smell of her oatmeal cookies baking in the kitchen; the precise, cloying taste of the orange-0flavored chocolate my grandpa bought me when we went to the sale barn to buy or sell livestock; it is in the flavor of fresh, home-made strawberry ice cream; it is in the smell of the Avon lotion that she used to put on my hands after I took a bath; it is in her hands, snapping peas; it is in the sound of and irrigation ditch, gurgling its way down to the fields; it is in the smell of hay."
Of mining, he says, "Mining is hard. Putting the earth back together again afterwards is a hell of a lot harder."
The same could be said for oil drilling, and fracking. Lessons we will never fully learn.
"We are Westerners, pathologically independent, pragmatic people. We accept the science, and scold those who put giant, scaremongering signs atop the tailing piles. We scoff at the ones who cringe in fear when they see the river turn orange with iron hydroxides--the same stuff that gives a jar of curry sauce its burnished orange color. And we're happy to shoulder the blame for our own demise."
When the town of Silverton, up stream for Durango, had been bought up for the Silverton Mountain Ski resort, leaving the place where he grew up reaching out to tourists in the winter, now too.
"Still, as I stood there in the empty street, I felt an ineffable sadness. So much has been lost. We've learned nothing. One-hundred-and-fifty-year-old habits die hard. When we venture outside of our little pockets of green--our Tellurides, our Durangos, and now our Silvertons--we'll find ourselves once again in the sacrifice zone. For every leaky mine we manage to restore to some semblance of 'nature', we'll drill another oil well, burn another twenty million tons of coal, sully our sacred waters in ways that we aren't even yet aware of or can possibly understand."
"Bonita Peak rises up just above the center of the caldera. Piles of yellow-ochre earth that look like a giant gopher colony cling to the slope here and there, the remnants of mining prospect holes and piles of waste rock mined from the earth years ago.
One of those piles, on the morning of August 5, a yellow CAT excavator paws gingerly and jerkily at dirt and tundra as workers in orange hard hats and neon-green vests watch. At approximately ten-thirty AM a stream of water spurts from where the excavator digs. It looks a lot like that opening scene in the Beverly Hillbillies when Jed strikes oil with a gunshot to the ground, only this isn't oil and it doesn't even look like water--it's bright orange. The excavator operator pulls away from the slope. One of the workers pulls out his phone and starts filming.
Within minutes, the little spout grows into a fountain and then a roiling torrent of thick, Tang-colored water. As the workers look on, stunned, the water roars over the edge of the mine waste-rock dump, carrying tons of the metal-laden material with it, crashing into the gently gurgling stream of the north fork of Cement Creek, far below, but not before a fair amount of it inundates one of the work vehicles, a black Suburban, filling it up with orange muck.
'Should we get out of here?' one worried worker asks.
'Oh, he's going to be pissed,' another answers. 'This isn't good.'
'What do we do now?' someone else asks, shocked yet oddly calm, as though a household plumbing project had gone awry.
The workers are staffers and contractors with the EPA who, in the moments before the catastrophe, were investigating the Level 7 portal of the Gold King Mine, which ad been drilled into the side of Bonita Peak back in 1900. The agency will later estimate that 3 million gallons of water--enough to fill four and a half Olympic-sized swimming pools, or to supply 21 families for a year--blasted out of the mine over the course of minutes. Only this isn't just water. It carries with it some 880,000 pounds of metals: zinc, cadmium, aluminum, arsenic, and mostly iron hydroxides, giving it the electric-orange color that will captivate and horrify onlookers near and far. It has been backing up underground behind debris for years, the pressure building, until, finally , on a sunny day in August, a heavy equipment operator facilitates its escape."
And so begins an environmental disaster that flows into the nearby Animas River, and 45 miles downstream, flows to the Colorado town of Durango (from which it takes its drinking water) and eventually into communities that draw water for drinking and for crops.
The author grew up in the area, and knew of its mining history, not a pretty picture, for which many myriad companies have denied responsibility. The history is long, and many have died in mining accidents, and I found myself shaking my head at learning of mining sites having been closed, only to be bought up again and renewed for additional mining. He ties his own story of growing up on the shores of the Animas River, playing in it, never wondering why it smelled, or its color was off.
"Acid mine drainage spews into western watersheds daily from thousands of abandoned hardrock, coal, and uranium mines. It amounts to a round-the-clock defilement of aquatic ecosystems. Yet except on rare occasions--such as when three million gallons of it got backed up in the Gold King Mine, then came blasting out over just a few hours--acid mine drainage is invisible, and goes mostly unnoticed. When mines are active in a region, however, a far more apparent form of pollution, mill tailings, or slimes, can cause even more damage--call it acid mine drainage, supersized."
The history of the mining in the area and environmental damages are extensively written about, often in terms of health issues of people who live in the area. It makes you wonder why people stay.
But the book comes alive when he writes about his childhood...
"And sometimes, especially in the spring after the first cutting of hay, the smell and the light ignite a conflagration of images in my mind, of sensations of the Farm: The way the tiny droplets of water condensed on the side of the metal ice cram container; it is the way the apples hung so heavy on the trees in the autumn when we drove underneath in the old white pickup and shook the fruit off to be ground up then pressed in the old cider press; it is the feeling of comfort hiding between rows of corn, the red dirt warm underneath; the smell of her oatmeal cookies baking in the kitchen; the precise, cloying taste of the orange-0flavored chocolate my grandpa bought me when we went to the sale barn to buy or sell livestock; it is in the flavor of fresh, home-made strawberry ice cream; it is in the smell of the Avon lotion that she used to put on my hands after I took a bath; it is in her hands, snapping peas; it is in the sound of and irrigation ditch, gurgling its way down to the fields; it is in the smell of hay."
Of mining, he says, "Mining is hard. Putting the earth back together again afterwards is a hell of a lot harder."
The same could be said for oil drilling, and fracking. Lessons we will never fully learn.
"We are Westerners, pathologically independent, pragmatic people. We accept the science, and scold those who put giant, scaremongering signs atop the tailing piles. We scoff at the ones who cringe in fear when they see the river turn orange with iron hydroxides--the same stuff that gives a jar of curry sauce its burnished orange color. And we're happy to shoulder the blame for our own demise."
When the town of Silverton, up stream for Durango, had been bought up for the Silverton Mountain Ski resort, leaving the place where he grew up reaching out to tourists in the winter, now too.
"Still, as I stood there in the empty street, I felt an ineffable sadness. So much has been lost. We've learned nothing. One-hundred-and-fifty-year-old habits die hard. When we venture outside of our little pockets of green--our Tellurides, our Durangos, and now our Silvertons--we'll find ourselves once again in the sacrifice zone. For every leaky mine we manage to restore to some semblance of 'nature', we'll drill another oil well, burn another twenty million tons of coal, sully our sacred waters in ways that we aren't even yet aware of or can possibly understand."
April 17, 2019
Roughly three and a half years ago, the EPA inadvertently set free a massive backlog of water and sludge from the abandoned Gold King Mine, outside Silverton, Colorado. The "slug" quickly made its way into the Animas River, which flows through both Durango, Colorado, and land belonging to the Navajo Nation, just across the border in New Mexico, turning the river "Tang colored." It was estimated that some three million gallons of water and eight hundred eighty thousand pounds of various metals (zinc, cadmium, aluminum, arsenic, and iron oxides) flowed from Gold King, into the Animas, then eventually into the Colorado River.
Jonathan Thompson has family roots to the Durango/Silverton area stretching back to the 1870s. He He's an award-winning journalist who has run his own newspaper. He served as editor-in-chief for High Country News from 2007 to 2010, and is currently one of their Contributing Editors. In fact, this Torrey House Press book had its beginnings in an August 2015 HCN article of Thompson's.
Thompson provides a history of the San Juan/Durango/Silverton area regarding both geography and habitation. He points out that even though Gold King has been called, "perhaps the most charismatic environmental disaster of our time," such "disasters" had happened many times before. (Maybe because our current digital/internet age allows everyone to be an on-the-ground reporter giving real-time coverage of anything and everything, is why this particular disaster became national news.)
Being a resident of Colorado for nearly quarter of a century, there was much for me to delight in, reading Thompson's history of the San Juan region. Durango and Silverton were my introduction, as an adult, to Colorado; so having history and tales of these two mountain burgs played directly to my hungry heart.
While I had no problems whatsoever reading Thompson, here, the section where he tells the tale of his landing in Silverton pirouettes off the page—the writing is more vivid and alive. So muchso, I'm hoping with bated breath that there's a Jonathan Thompson memoir in our [please, be near] future.
The only thing I feel is missing from "Lost Souls," are photographs of the area during the covered times, and the people mentioned. (C'mon, Thompson, you're a journalist—what gives?)
This is the fourth book by Torrey House Press that I've read. They're, "an independent nonprofit publisher promoting environmental conservation through literature," based in Salt Lake City. This book by Jonathan Thompson, precisely like the other THPs I've read, is several degrees higher quality than nonfiction books seem to settle for, these days. The copy I read is a loaner, but fear not one whit, Gentle Readers—I'll be getting mine own copy, very post-haste.
Jonathan Thompson has family roots to the Durango/Silverton area stretching back to the 1870s. He He's an award-winning journalist who has run his own newspaper. He served as editor-in-chief for High Country News from 2007 to 2010, and is currently one of their Contributing Editors. In fact, this Torrey House Press book had its beginnings in an August 2015 HCN article of Thompson's.
Thompson provides a history of the San Juan/Durango/Silverton area regarding both geography and habitation. He points out that even though Gold King has been called, "perhaps the most charismatic environmental disaster of our time," such "disasters" had happened many times before. (Maybe because our current digital/internet age allows everyone to be an on-the-ground reporter giving real-time coverage of anything and everything, is why this particular disaster became national news.)
Being a resident of Colorado for nearly quarter of a century, there was much for me to delight in, reading Thompson's history of the San Juan region. Durango and Silverton were my introduction, as an adult, to Colorado; so having history and tales of these two mountain burgs played directly to my hungry heart.
While I had no problems whatsoever reading Thompson, here, the section where he tells the tale of his landing in Silverton pirouettes off the page—the writing is more vivid and alive. So muchso, I'm hoping with bated breath that there's a Jonathan Thompson memoir in our [please, be near] future.
The only thing I feel is missing from "Lost Souls," are photographs of the area during the covered times, and the people mentioned. (C'mon, Thompson, you're a journalist—what gives?)
This is the fourth book by Torrey House Press that I've read. They're, "an independent nonprofit publisher promoting environmental conservation through literature," based in Salt Lake City. This book by Jonathan Thompson, precisely like the other THPs I've read, is several degrees higher quality than nonfiction books seem to settle for, these days. The copy I read is a loaner, but fear not one whit, Gentle Readers—I'll be getting mine own copy, very post-haste.
July 16, 2018
Award-winning investigative environmental journalist Jonathan P. Thompson digs into the science, politics, and greed behind the 2015 Gold King Mine disaster, and unearths a litany of impacts wrought by a century and a half of mining, energy development, and fracking in southwestern Colorado. Amid these harsh realities, Thompson explores how a new generation is setting out to make amends.
As shocking and heartbreaking as the Gold King spill and its aftermath may be, it's merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The disaster itself was the climax of the long and troubled story of the Gold King mine, staked by a Swedish immigrant back in 1887. And it was only the most visible manifestation of a slow-moving, multi-faceted environmental catastrophe that had been unfolding here long before the events of August 5, 2015.
Jonathan Thompson is a native Westerner with deep roots in southwestern Colorado. He has been an environmental journalist focusing on the American West since he signed on as reporter and photographer at the Silverton Standard & the Miner newspaper in 1996. He has worked and written for High Country News for over a decade, serving as editor-in-chief from 2007 to 2010. He was a Ted Scripps fellow in environmental journalism at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and in 2016 he was awarded the Society of Environmental Journalists' Outstanding Beat Reporting, Small Market. He currently lives in Bulgaria with his wife Wendy and daughters Lydia and Elena.
As shocking and heartbreaking as the Gold King spill and its aftermath may be, it's merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The disaster itself was the climax of the long and troubled story of the Gold King mine, staked by a Swedish immigrant back in 1887. And it was only the most visible manifestation of a slow-moving, multi-faceted environmental catastrophe that had been unfolding here long before the events of August 5, 2015.
Jonathan Thompson is a native Westerner with deep roots in southwestern Colorado. He has been an environmental journalist focusing on the American West since he signed on as reporter and photographer at the Silverton Standard & the Miner newspaper in 1996. He has worked and written for High Country News for over a decade, serving as editor-in-chief from 2007 to 2010. He was a Ted Scripps fellow in environmental journalism at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and in 2016 he was awarded the Society of Environmental Journalists' Outstanding Beat Reporting, Small Market. He currently lives in Bulgaria with his wife Wendy and daughters Lydia and Elena.
October 21, 2022
This book is about mining in the San Juan Mountains near Silverton, CO, from the 1870's, when it began, to the 1990's, when it ended, and the terrible impact it had on the creeks and rivers, especially the Animas River, during and after this period. Though the book purports to focus on The Gold King Mine disaster of 2015, when one of the mine's plugged adits blew out and unleashed a torrent of ore and chemicals that turned creeks and rivers orange for a couple of days, it is broader than that. You learn about the author's family in the Animas Valley, his career as a journalist in the area, the history of other big mines in the area, and the rough lives of miners working in tunnels over 10,000 feet above sea level. Though the story is a bit disjointed, it is well written and very evenhandedly informative. If you're interested in the the history of the Four Corners area of the southwest, this is part of it and the book is well worth reading.
January 6, 2019
I really liked this book and had a hard time putting it down. I don't think descriptive prose is the author's strength. I just have to toss that in because I truly cringed on the last page when he described the color of a river's surface as "the exact pale-purple of the sky, like lilacs in a new lover's hair on a Sunday morning in May." Minor quibbles like that aside, I enjoyed the detailed backstory of this small corner of the world that has been a major part of my life for the past few decades, and continues to intrigue, perplex, and frustrate me. Whatever the author's shortcomings may be, he clearly cares deeply for this area and he has brought together and synthesized an impressive amount of research in an engaging and entertaining way.
April 22, 2019
This was a history on mining in the American Southwest and also included a lot of information about geography, minerals and the negative effects of tourism. The author is certainly knowledgeable and passionate about his subject, but this came off to me like an overly-long article. While I share his dismay and depression at the polluting and misuse of our lands and waterways (and the certainty that I am more of a culprit than I know) there just wasn't anything very hopeful here. The author's scholarly "voice" while authoritative, lacked a sense of personality for me. I did like reading about Southwest Colorado but the lack of a human character to latch on to or any kind of story arc made the whole thing too dry for me to really appreciate.
April 23, 2026
I liked it. Thorough, mind-boggling, depressing account of the history and deleterious effects of mining in the Silverton/Durango area. I couldn’t begin to keep track of the various people and agencies that have worked mines in the region over the centuries, and, sadly, I also lost track of the number of times these mines have failed and emptied huge quantities of deadly minerals and particles into the rivers south of the mines. What made the book more interesting to me was the family history the author included. I also found it interesting that even he eventually moved to a more amenable and less fraught region of Colorado.
June 7, 2024
3.7 I learned about the Silverton/Durango region I still have yet to visit. I had no idea the strong mining past Colorado had even though I’ve driven by Idaho Springs and Clear Creek many times. However, there was sooooo much of this book spent on the history & background of the event that there was only like a chapter or two of the 2015 disaster itself. I was hoping to hear more details about it especially being such a modern environmental disaster.
April 30, 2019
A fascinating read. I didn't expect to learn the history of the region. Nor did I expect to learn that this particular disaster was a mere blip on the radar, that globally far worse has happened, and that this was in no way a one time occurrence. It's depressing, educational, and oddly comforting. A strange work that I highly recommend.
August 21, 2020
Whether you are a local or interested in the basic history of the west: mining, genocide, greed, cruelty, ignorance, environmental disaster, mountains, rivers, you know, the glorious tale of unbridled capitalism, this is the book for you! Written by a sixth generation local who calls a spade a spade, this read is right on and very accessible much like the "Emerald Mile", if that helps.
Want to Read
November 4, 2023Environment-Current Affairs- Politics
-John P. Thompson has been an environmental journalist focusing on the American West since he signed on as a reporter and photographer at the Silverton Standard & the Miner newspaper in 1996.
--Equal Parts The Quiet Crisis and Silent Spring, and one hundred percent scary, timely, and so very important Peter Schertz- co-owner of Maria's Bookstop
-John P. Thompson has been an environmental journalist focusing on the American West since he signed on as a reporter and photographer at the Silverton Standard & the Miner newspaper in 1996.
--Equal Parts The Quiet Crisis and Silent Spring, and one hundred percent scary, timely, and so very important Peter Schertz- co-owner of Maria's Bookstop
October 4, 2018
Interesting history and enjoyable anecdotes, but the strong slant of environmental catastrophe happening and waiting to happen again I expected to be more approachable but it came off as simple assumed.
July 12, 2024
3.5/5 stars. This books is very well written and researched. It’s dense from a geology standpoint and is broader in scope than I expected, not focusing on the Gold King spill, but rather the environmental politics of SW Colorado and NW over time.
October 2, 2018
It's eye-opening to see how mining and big interests have defeated farmers at every turn, even when the landowners have won their fights in court.
April 13, 2019
A must read for folks living in SW Colorado.
October 16, 2019
Jonathan Thompson explains acid drainage and the legal, social and political ramifications associated with mining practices. His scope goes beyond the Gold King Mine.
January 18, 2020
One American river under assault.
April 17, 2023
The history of a place. Not a fast paced book, but also not a slog and I definitely learned some things about that area of Colorado.
April 15, 2024
A great read for anyone interested in the San Luis Valley, in mining ecology, or in the history of environmental abuse and the future of environmental justice. Thoroughly researched and engaging!
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