It also helps pay for water quality sampling by the state, assessing effects on fish and wildlife, and possible cleanup. Due to some pre-planned fix work, the Mancos water dock will not be available until Tuesday, August 11th. Federal officials say all but one of a test batch of fingerling trout deliberately exposed to the water survived during the weekend.
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The spill happened last week during a mine clean-up operation overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency.
In Colorado, the EPA was preparing to install a drainage pipe from the Gold King Mine, as part of a project to cap a nearby mine.
A crew looking to pump out wastewater accidentally breached a debris dam that had formed inside the mine, triggering the release of waste into Cement Creek, a tributary of the Animas River in San Juan County.
Flynn says New Mexico will stand with the Navajo Nation to ensure the EPA compensates everyone in the Four Corners region who has been affected by the spill.
According to the EPA, the spill occurred when one of its teams was using heavy equipment to enter the Gold King Mine, a suspended mine north of Durango.
The Navajo Tribal Utility Authority turned off water pumps to the small Utah towns of Montezuma Creek and Aneth in anticipation of the wastewater hitting the river Monday. This mine has been leaking sludge for a long time and EPA was on the scene in hopes of cleaning it up.
Intake systems at some drinking water networks have already been shut down, the Associated Press reported.
A photo sent to CBS4 on Sunday shows the change in the river’s color since Thursday, and piling of sediment on the sides of the river. And the EPA has been saying, “We want to make this a Superfund site”.
The discolored water from the spill stretched more than 160 kilometres from where it originated near Colorado’s historic mining town of Silverton into the New Mexico municipalities of Farmington, Aztec and Kirtland.
Water samples will confirm whether or not the toxic sludge has made it into Utah as it goes from the Animas River to the San Juan River and eventually into Lake Powell. There, it migrated into the San Juan River and wound its way into southeastern Utah. Colorado’s governor declared a disaster.
However, state environment department officials said Sunday that they still need much more information and were only beginning to examine the data. The plume could reach Lake Powell by Wednesday, experts said.
“It’s just totally an unknown is what it amounts to”.
“When you see a terrible-looking yellow river, I think human beings are impacted deeply by that”.
Critics say the administration is exercising a clear double standard by failing to demand the kind of accountability – including the firings of those responsible – that it has demanded of private companies. “We’re going to have to do ongoing monitoring”.
But the levels are dropping as the plume drifts farther down the river and is diluted.
The agencies will provide free water testing from 9 a.m.to 5 p.m. through Friday at the San Juan County Sheriff’s Office substation in Lee Acres, 21 County Road 5500 in Farmington.
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And for him, the biggest concern wasn’t the immediate threat anyway; it’s the spill’s potential long-term and cumulative impact. Right now, she said, is a critical time for their crops. “DDW is following the situation closely”, according to a statement from the Division of Environmental Quality. And the stuff is heavy metal, it’s arsenic, it’s lead, it’s cadmium, at 300 to 3,000 times the normal level.
