The US Supreme Court [official website] on Monday asked [order list, PDF] the Obama administration to comment on New Mexico’s lawsuit against Colorado over the Gold King Mine waste spill [JURIST report], which released 3 million gallons of contaminated water. New Mexico sued Colorado over the spill in June demanding that Colorado be held responsible for the contamination as well as decades of toxic drainage from other mines. The complaint [text, PDF], filed in the Supreme Court by New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas [official website], stated that the spill “was the coup de grâce of two decades of disastrous environmental decision-making by Colorado, for which New Mexico and its citizens are now paying the price.” The Supreme Court invited Solicitor General Ian Gershengorn [official profile] to file a brief, which would represent the Executive’s official stance on the lawsuit—relevant because the waste spill was accidentally caused by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) [official website].

In August the Navajo Nation filed suit [JURIST report] against the EPA alleging that water flowing from the punctured mine in Colorado was toxic and “damaged the Nation’s environment, people, and economy.” Specifically, the 48-page complaint [complaint] alleged that the toxic wastewater contaminated the San Juan River, a river on which the Nation has a “[u]nique dependence,” and the contamination negatively affected the production of crops, feeding of cattle, culture and economy of the Nation. The complaint also alleged that the operators of the mines hired by the EPA, Gold King Mines Corporation, “continuously neglected its obligations to control the discharge of wastewater from its properties and to operate the treatment facility to protect [their] water” and that the damages were “preventable and foreseeable.”