Before a hushed City Council at the town hall, the man who accidentally unleashed poisons from the earth explained how it all happened.
His name is Hayes Griswold, a 28-year veteran of the Environmental Protection Agency, and on Aug. 5, he and a small crew were working on a defunct gold mine near Silverton called the Gold King.
According to a transcript of the Monday meeting reviewed by the Los Angeles Times, the plan was to do some minor excavation work and insert a pipe as part of a cleanup effort. Griswold used a backhoe to dig into the material in front of him, but, he told the assembled council members, he pulled too much "unconsolidated material" from the ceiling of the mine's mouth.