HERE’S A CLASSIC CASE OF BUREAUCRATS COVERING UP FOR EACH OTHER: When an Environmental Protection Agency work-crew accidentally unleashed a three-million gallon flood of dangerous waste from Colorado’s Gold King Mine in August 2015, it turned the Animus River yellow for nearly a week. That river provides drinking water for millions of people in three states and the Navajo Nation.

Federal officials promised an “independent” review of the disaster by the Army Corps of Engineers to determine its cause and who was responsible for it, not least because the flood included 880,000 pounds of toxic materials like lead and arsenic. But when the review came out, it was full of gaps, most notably concerning who made the critical decisions that resulted in the flood.

Ethan Barton, one of the determined reporters with the Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group, has been digging for months seeking the full story about Gold King Mine. His findings are being published this week and what has become clear is that officials at EPA caused the disaster and they then joined with compatriots at the Department of the Interior (which is a part-owner of the mine, oh by the way!) in a bald-faced coverup.

The review was ultimately conducted by Interior, not the Army Corps because, Barton reports today, “Army Corps, however, had already developed potential topics to probe, and its lead reviewer was highly experienced in similar investigations, documents obtained by TheDCNF show. DOI’s final scope for the Gold King Mine review, in fact, nixed crucial topics Army Corps planned to examine, including the root cause of the spill.”

House Committee on Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop has been closely following Barton’s reporting and the panel’s investigators have compiled a mountain of evidence about the events that led up to Gold King Mine. Don’t be surprised if a full-fledged congressional investigation is in the offing. Barton has also exposed EPA’s $3.3 billion worth of secret slush funds.