“It’s very unfortunate”, Stover said.
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The amount is in addition to $500,000 in emergency funds the New Mexico Environment Department requested and received Friday.
The spill, estimated to be 80 miles (130 kilometers) long, was a major embarrassment for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the federal government agency tasked with combating pollution. Flynn said the state will stand with the Navajo Nation to ensure that the EPA compensates everyone in the Four Corners region who has been affected by the spill. Boaters and fishing groups have been told to avoid affected stretches of the Animas and San Juan rivers, which are crowded with rafters and anglers in a normal summer.
Extended exposure to those metals in high concentrations poses a significant health threat to humans and animals. “We arrived at the put in and decided to go for it anyway”, says Beach.
The EPA leader spoke about the spill at an event at which she was scheduled to discuss her agency’s role in the Obama administration’s recently unveiled “Clean Power Plan”. Hundreds in Farmington, New Mexico took their water to be tested.
Howard adds that the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area has issued a statement saying, “Most river sediments will settle out of the water when the river current slows at Lake Powell”.
Mark Hayes of the EPA reminded residents not to use the water until they get an all clear.
Shower facilities were opened for residents in need at the San Juan County fairgrounds.
For Colorado and much of the western United States, the fouling of Cement Creek and the Animas River “might be a great teaching moment” regarding pollution from abandoned mines, she says. Monday, all but one of the 116 fingerlings were still alive, and no dead fish had been spotted elsewhere along the river, it said.
He said his company has had to cancel 20 rafting trips so far, and his dozen employees are out of work until the river is deemed safe to enter again.
Officials said they believe the spill carried metals like iron, zinc and copper into a creek that feeds into the Animas.
The spill at the defunct Gold King Mine began last week when an EPA inspection crew was investigating existing leakages.
Townspeople watching millions of gallons of orange-colored mine waste flow through their communities demanded clarity on Tuesday about possible long-term threats to their water supply.
Members of New Mexico’s congressional delegation sent a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy to express concern over the failure of the agency to notify New Mexico sooner about the problem.
Last week, the Animas River, which flows from southwest Colorado to New Mexico, started filling up with a toxic yellow stew from an old gold mine. The mayor in Durango, Colorado shut off its city’s intake valve from the Animas River. As of Monday, only one fish had died, but the agency said it didn’t know if that was because of the metals in the water.
Officials in New Mexico and Colorado are pissed because they say the EPA did little to inform them of the disaster, and originally misrepresented the magnitude of the spill.
Pete McKay, San Juan County commissioner in Colorado, looks at the site Monday, August 10, 2015, where the Gold King Mine breach occurred, north of Silverton.
The mine has been inactive since 1923.
“The water appears worse aesthetically than it actually is, in terms of health”, said Ron Cohen, a civil and environmental engineering professor at the Colorado School of Mines.
Drinking water was being hauled to some communities.
Although the effects of the spill remain uncertain, the president of the Navajo Nation, Russell Begaye, vowed Sunday that the EPA is “not going to get away with this”, local news station KOB reported.
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Intensive water testing is nevertheless underway for signs of such cancer-causing toxins as lead and arsenic, with results expected in a matter of days.
