Last week, the EPA’s hazmat team, inspecting an abandoned Gold Rush-era mine near Durango, Colorado, breached a retaining wall that dumped three million gallons of toxic sludge into a creek that is a tributary of the Animas River, writes the WSJ.

The plume of lead, arsenic, mercury, copper, cadmium and other heavy metals turned the water a memorable shade of yellow-orange chrome. The sludge is so acidic that it stings upon touch. Colorado, New Mexico and the Navajo Indian reservation have declared states of emergency as the contamination empties into Lake Powell in Utah and the San Juan River in New Mexico.

State and local officials learned about the ecological fiasco when they saw their river becoming the color of Indian curry. The EPA took 24 hours to notify officials and has yet to explain the cause of the accident.

Apparently the EPA was excavating the mine in search of a notional make-work problem to solve. But where are the demands for reparation and the media outrage, asks the WSJ? President Obama, still on the golf course, has voiced no indignation, and the green lobby seems to be reacting with a yawn. Read more here.