“In the immediate wake of the spill and in the days that followed, there was a troubling lack of communication from EPA to federal, state, and local officials”, said New Mexico Senators Tom Udall, Martin Heinrich and Representative Ben Ray Lujan in a joint statement. EPA’s regions 8 – which was responsible for the incident – 6, and 9 are all part of the agency’s response.
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Wastewater continues to pour from a tunnel wall accidentally breached by EPA crews last Wednesday but the concentration of heavy metals reaching local streams has diminished.
Today does marks the first day people affected by the spill can file claims with the EPA. The EPA may rightly be taking the heat for this one, but this leakage was an accident waiting to happen – and the long history of other metal-pollution leaks into Colorado’s water is evidence to that effect.
The toxic sludge contains arsenic, lead, and other potentially harmful heavy metals. 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 during the summer. Exposure to high levels of these metals can cause an array of health problems from cancer to kidney disease to developmental problems in children.
“We’re going to assume that maybe it’s in there mixed around, but we really don’t have any evidence to say conclusively that it’s entered Utah”, Spangler said. It’s now believed that 3 million gallons of water laced with heavy metals, including lead and arsenic, spilled from the Gold King Mine, an abandoned mine near Durango.
“It’s completely irresponsible for the EPA not to have informed New Mexico immediately.”
Ribbons of yellow toxic sludge are just now beginning to dissipate along the Animas and San Juan rivers.
Donations of bottled water were sent in, and the American Red Cross was working to get water to homeless people who live along the river and depend on it for bathing.
Shower facilities were also opened up for residents in need at the San Juan County fairgrounds.
Still, as a precautionary measure, the agency said stretches of the rivers would be closed for drinking water, recreation and other uses at least through 17 August.
Dissolved iron in the waste turned the long plume an orange-yellow color, so “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.
Drew Beezley is co-owner of 4 Corners Whitewater in Durango.
As of Monday, only one fish had died, and it’s not clear if the contamination was the cause. Cleaning up the mines is very costly, and the Clean Water Act says that anyone who contributes to pollution of a waterway can be prosecuted for a federal crime, even if they were trying to clean up pollution. Hickenlooper on Monday declared the Animas spill a disaster area, freeing up $500,000 in emergency state funding.
It also helps pay for water quality sampling by the state, assessing impacts on fish and wildlife, and any possible cleanup.
Navajo Nation Vice President Jonathan Nez said that farmers along the San Juan River, a tributary of the Animas, have stopped irrigating their farms and could lose their crops in two weeks if they’re not assured the water is safe. The EPA initially said 1 million gallons of wastewater had been released, but that figure has risen sharply.
Experts estimate there are 55,000 such abandoned mines from Colorado to Idaho to California, and federal and state authorities have struggled to clean them for decades. The mayor in Durango, Colorado shut off its city’s intake valve from the Animas River.
However, the same is not true for the many residents who get their water from wells.
Utilities and residents along Colorado’s Animas River and New Mexico’s San Juan River are scrambling to find alternative water sources following an accidental mine spill over the weekend.
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The mine has been inactive since 1923.
