Animas River Colorado Reopening

However, the toxic source of the water, the mines in the San Juan Mountains, are only now being addressed because of the work of the federal agency.

Though acid drainage occurs naturally in some environments, its exacerbated by mining, which exposes the sulfide to oxygen.

“My concern is, can people still eat these fish?” he said. “But could anything be a bigger stain than this?”

Anderson said a curve in the San Juan River could provide the metals a place to accumulate and eventually spill over into Lake Powell, which straddles Arizona’s border with Utah.

“We’re monitoring the situation closely”, the governor said. Bottled water on the Navajo Nation is becoming scarce.

At this time the Animas River has not been opened in New Mexico.

But even Hickenlooper didn’t drink the water exactly as it came out of the river.

“There needs to be a long-term conversation about the immediacy of what needs to be cleaned up for all of the other mines,”Luján said”.

The shareholders group has conducted several voluntary mine waste cleanup projects since its formation. The sludge caused massive fish kills in the Sacramento River system, which supplies a fifth of the state’s water, more than 30 times.

I’m confused. Does EPA stand for the Environmental Protection Agency, or the Environmental Pollution Agency?

She said EPA is used to getting sued.

On Friday, officials in Colorado reopened the Animas to boating after the wastewater laced with heavy metals spilled into the popular waterway. The Animas, McCarthy said, is back to pre-spill levels of heavy metals, so Bates was hopeful the San Juan would soon get the all-clear as well.

“A lot of these are Mom and Pops, they’ve inherited the property or they bought it years ago before the environmental laws were passed, and they just don’t have the resources”, said Doug Jamison, with the hazardous materials division at Colorado’s state health department.

Yazzie said the chapter had already instituted its own water hauling program when “This morning, S&S Trucking out of Farmington showed up out of the blue and said they had been hired by EPA to bring us water”.

“My heart goes out to them Rick, because I’ve operated a tourist business in Silverton”. The review was conducted by the EPA, state and local health officials.

“It’s a shame and it’s scary what’s happening out there”, Ducey said.

How did this peaceful tributary turn into a torrent of toxic Orange Julius?

Experts say the abandoned gold mine breached by the EPA will take many years and millions of dollars simply to manage.

“This is not the end of the story, this is the beginning”, Coffman said.

State and federal officials today lifted the precaution against using water from domestic wells in the Animas River floodplain, but left in place restrictions on drawing water directly from the river, the New Mexico Department of Health announced.

The Farmington Daily Times (http://bit.ly/1KjwIjX ) reports that Secretary Ryan Flynn told residents there Wednesday night that the move was irresponsible and sent a bad message. The orange and yellow contamination floated downstream into the Navajo Nation, Utah and New Mexico.

New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas said during the conference that he met with mayors, commissioners and emergency responders in San Juan County.

“I’m from the school, ‘Trust, but verify.’ And we will have a parallel set of data for every one of these tests”, Hickenlooper said.

The EPA didn’t respond to questions about testing on the reservation before airtime. “Once the claim is made it will only be for the claims suffered to date and precludes future claims”, he said.