“Two Navajo Nation towns along the San Juan River in Utah have already shut off their water systems and have water trucks standing by”, NPR’s Howard Berkes reports. The lower stretch of the river serves parts of California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah.
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Governor Susana Martinez declares a state of emergency due to the 3 million gallon waste spill in the Animas River. “This is a devastating blow”, said Moler.
“We had lots of trips booked”.
Hickenlooper said this spill should serve as a turning point for the EPA and how it handles mine-cleanups. The contaminants have been settling to the ground, the EPA says.
The orange-tinged contamination plume, containing heavy metals such as arsenic, mercury and lead, has dissipated through dilution as it spreads downstream, with its leading edge no longer visible from aerial surveys, the EPA said.
Federal officials say 3 million gallons of waste that spilled from an old Colorado mine hasn’t arrived at Lake Powell yet, but it will be further diluted in the massive body of water when it does.
Tests show some of the metals have settled to the bottom and would dissolve only if conditions became acidic, which isn’t likely, Cohen said. So far, there have been no reported cases of anyone’s health being harmed by the spilled heavy metals, she said.
No die-off of wildlife along the river has been detected.
The contamination was released by the Environmental Protection Agency on August. 5.
From a public health standpoint, the agency recommends that anyone who comes into contact with the Animas River washes with soap and water. “The Animas River does not join the San Juan River until some 80 miles downstream by Farmington”, the release states.
“There are more people who want to know, ‘OK, what’s going to happen now?” “We’re hauling water from wells outside the disaster area and using our own Navajo Nation funds to run these trunks back and forth”. The EPA has a long list of abandoned mines to clean up across the West. The first wave comprises water-soluble pollutants, including arsenic and cadmium, freely flowing with the river’s current. “As I’ve said before, I am very concerned by EPA’s lack of communication and inability to provide accurate information”.
“By the weekend, without any rain, we’ll be in trouble”, she said.
Members of New Mexico’s congressional delegation sent a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, expressing concern over the failure of the agency to notify New Mexico sooner.
The Navajo Nation has also been affected.
He toured the river in Durango on Tuesday and talked to a fish biologist at a fish hatchery to learn more about the impact the spill is having on the fish population.
When it comes to pollution, the EPA appears to have one set of rules for itself and another for everyone else. “We would hope that they would be cautious and recognize how a river is such a lifeblood to these people down here”. “Right now we’re just cancelling by the day”, Drew Beezley, co-owner of a whitewater rafting company in Durango, Colorado, told the Daily Mail.
“This is a summertime business, huge river rafting”.
“We believe it is critical that she see firsthand the extent of the damage and the need for substantial cleanup efforts”, they said.
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The troubling thing about circumstances surrounding the Gold King Mine, and the dumping of orange, iron-laden waste into the Animas River, is that the mine, out of commission since 1923, was in the environmental-mitigation process.
