EPA would pay eligible Gold King Mine spill claims

EPA would receive up to $3.3 million to pay covered claims. The money would pay claims covered by the Gold King Mine spill compensation proposal. The money would remain available until spent. The funding would be for fiscal year 2025.

EPA would limit payments to homeowners, farmers, livestock grazers, and businesses that meet the claim rules. Claimants must have filed with EPA on or before August 5, 2017, and had their claim denied or their covered losses only partly paid. Before enactment, claimants must not have settled with the United States for more than $2,500 or had a court judgment in a related case. Related cases include the spill and pollution or threatened pollution from the Bonita Peak Mining District site in Colorado on or before enactment. Businesses must operate when paid and must neither own mines nor perform mining-related business.

Payments would cover documented spill losses that remain unpaid. Covered losses include personal injury, death, property damage, and the listed business and farming losses. EPA would decide whether losses are adequately documented. Business income from vacation rentals would be excluded.

EPA would cap payments at actual losses and the amount originally claimed. Payments would exclude cleanup response costs, emotional distress, interest, and extra damages meant to punish wrongdoing. Colorado law would generally govern how EPA calculates losses.

Claimants would make a binding choice about how to seek compensation. The choice between this process and other authorized legal claims would bind claimants for all their spill injuries. Accepting payment would release covered claims about the same subject against the United States, its agencies, and its employees. Claimants would certify their claims are true under penalty of perjury. Federal benefit claims would remain available. Claimants would have 60 days after a final EPA decision to challenge it in federal district court in Colorado. The court would use EPA’s record and uphold decisions supported by substantial evidence.