The agency will continue to provide capture and oversight of the testing of wildlife for New Mexico.
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8, 2015 about the Navajo Nation response to the release of mine waste into the Animas River which has impacted the Navajo Nation water supply.
They were hoping to access the contaminated water so they could investigate what was in it.
The governors of Colorado and New Mexico on Monday declared states of emergency, and several communities along the river shut intakes to shield drinking water supplies. The attorneys general plan a public announcement in the afternoon.
Utah State University ecologist Charles Hawkins said the health effects on fish could take weeks or months to become lethal, or might translate into reproductive damage.
Mayor Tommy Roberts of Farmington, New Mexico, where the Animas joins the San Juan, said it was more than 24 hours before his town was alerted to the spill.
Utah officials say the progress of the wastewater that was accidentally released by an EPA crew is hard to track because it’s been diluted and is no longer the distinct yellow color seen closer to the Colorado spill site.
The Associated Press reported on one recreational businesses along the Animas River in Durango that had lost thousands of dollars due to the spill. The spill sent lead, arsenic, cadmium, and other contaminants into the 126-mile-long river, turning the water a mustard hue.
McCarthy called the spill tragic and said the agency’s commitment is to “get this right and protect public health”.
Since not everyone trusts what the EPA is telling them, KOB has decided to get the water tested ourselves, hiring an independent lab to analyze water we’ve collected from the Animas.
It’s unclear what the announcement will be.
The plume of wastewater is gone and the river is clearing up, but it’s still off limits until at least next week.
Local water experts aren’t anxious, believing the risky elements will dissipate well before reaching Southern California’s intake at Lake Havasu – 850 miles from the original spill.
From there, the wastewater has washed into the Animas River and into the San Juan River in northwestern New Mexico. She will arrive in Colorado Wednesday to meet with the people who live there and see the mess for herself. “We’re hauling water from wells outside the disaster area and using our own Navajo Nation funds to run these trunks back and forth”.
Balderas says that because there are questions about the safety of the river, it’s too early to guess at the true costs of what he called an unfortunate disaster.
In an unusual change of roles, the top water pollution regulator in the U.S. has claimed responsibility for sending a flood of toxic waste into the Colorado Animas River last week. That waste has now moved all the way into Arizona and Utah and is diluting.
There are no plans so far to slow water flows on the Colorado River below Lake Powell because of a mine spill upstream in Colorado.
Katie Wood, a spokeswoman for Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, says it’s a possibility officials will monitor.
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Russell Begaye stared into a hole in the side of a Colorado mountain, watching as yellow water contaminated with heavy metals poured out and raced down a slope toward a creek that feeds rivers critical to survival on the largest Native American reservation in the United States and across the Southwest.
