(NaturalNews) Just one week after workers from her agency "accidentally" released about three million gallons of heavy metal-laden sludge down the Animas River in Colorado, sending arsenic, cadmium, lead and mercury into drinking water supplies that serve millions of people throughout the Southwest, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy had the gall to stand before a Washington, D.C., think tank and declare that the biggest threat to our children and communities is "climate change."

McCarthy gushed on and on during her rant about how "everything and everyone we love" is being affected by climate change, and that it's "one of the most important issues that we face." Meanwhile, a massive, sickly, yellow-tinged plume of industrial waste from Colorado's Gold King Mine near Silverton continues to weave its way throughout Utah, New Mexico, Arizona and California, the direct result of EPA contract workers who allegedly released the toxic flow by mistake.

One would think that McCarthy's focus would have been on her own agency's blunder in how it handled the mine situation, which is by far the biggest immediate threat to people living throughout the American Southwest. The release of all those toxic chemicals down a waterway that feeds into the larger Colorado river basin represents a disaster of truly epic proportions, and one that will surely have lasting consequences.

But instead of acknowledging this, McCarthy chose to raise ire over the climate change bogeyman and call for the dismantling of America's coal production industry. Praising the so-called Clean Power Plan, which the American Action Forum estimates will cost more than 125,000 Americans their jobs, McCarthy completely glossed over the massive environmental destruction caused by her own agency in Colorado, and pinned the world's problems on coal workers.

Did EPA intentionally release Gold King Mine waste to obtain "Superfund" dollars?

When asked on a separate occasion what the EPA plans to do in response to the Animas River disaster, McCarthy told reporters that her agency is planning to hire an outside agency to conduct "internal reviews," emphasizing that the EPA couldn't be "more upset about the incident happening." She further claimed that the EPA is dedicated to "getting this right."

But a letter to the editor published in the July 30 issue of The Silverton Standard & The Miner tells a much different story. Just six days prior to the EPA's release of toxic wastewater into the Animas River, a local resident by the name of Dave Taylor warned that the EPA was potentially planning this release all along as part of a "Superfund blitzkrieg."

An EPA official by the name of Martin Hestmark actually met with the editor of The Silverton Standard & The Miner on June 23 to discuss a proposal the agency had for permanently halting a the flow of toxic wastewater from the shuttered mine, which had been releasing poisonous water at a rate of between 300-500 gallons per minute prior to the recent release.

When the scheme proved to be a hard sell as a "Superfund" project, the EPA conveniently and "accidentally" unleashed the entire mine's worth of polluted water down the Animas River less than one week later, sending millions of gallons of noxious waste down the river. And now, as Taylor predicted, the EPA will be seeking Superfund money to construct a multi-million dollar treatment plant in the area, a bone of contention among local residents and politicians alike.

"Based on my 47 years of experience as a professional geologist, it appears to me that the EPA is setting your town and the area up for a possible Superfund blitzkrieg," Taylor wrote. "Reading between the lines, I believe that has been the EPA's plan all along. The proposed Red & Bonita plugging plan has been their way of getting a foot in the door to justify their hidden agenda for construction of a treatment plant."

"After all, with a budget of $8.2 billion and 17,000 employees, the EPA needs new, big projects to feed the best and justify their existence."

You can read the full letter here about the geologist who predicted the mining waste water spill here.

Sources for this article include:

CNSNews.com

U.S.News.com

InvestmentWatchBlog.com

DurangoHerald.com

DurangoHerald.com