Toxic Spill Expected to Reach Lake Powell This Week

Of course, everyone is warned about not drinking water directly from the river.

Dissolved iron in the waste turned the long plume an alarming orange-yellow – a look familiar to old-time miners who call it “yellow boy” – 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.

Communities and farms along the river seem to be the most heavily impacted so far.

Though the spill into the Animas River in southern Colorado is unusual for its size, it’s only the latest instance of the region grappling with the legacy of a centuries-old mining boom that helped populate the region but also left buried toxins.

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 near Durango. Federal and contract workers accidentally unleashed the spill last week as they inspected the abandoned mine site.

Near Silverton, “contractors have built three plastic-lined storage ponds to hold back millions of gallons of tainted wastewater flowing from (the) abandoned mine”, USA Today reports. While the EPA was digging around, water gushed out and started to drain down.

Tests on public drinking water systems are conducted separately by the state environment department, the agencies said.

Stover said it was particularly galling that the Animas was contaminated by the very chemicals that environmental officials have been trying to remove from its watershed.

Let’s remember this contamination mishap, and the government’s botched response, the next time EPA officials treat a jobs-creating endeavor as if it is a water-poisoning crime scene waiting to happen.

The parks agency said it embedded trout fingerlings in cages along sections of the river on Thursday so it could monitor the water’s impact.

“We’re just hopeful there’s enough dilution that we wont see heavy concentration of any of those contaminants”.

Jerry Mcbride-ZUMAPRESS.com People kayak in the Animas River near Durango, Colo., in water colored from a mine waste spill.

An estimated 1 million gallons of gold mine wastewater was leaked into the upper portions of Cement Creek at the Gold King Mine in San Juan County, Colorado Wednesday morning.

The San Juan River arm of the lake does draw fishermen and river runners, but visitation has probably diminished as lake levels have dropped due to the ongoing drought, she said.

“The visual and the press of that kind of deeply devastated ecosystem in general, you could imagine what it does to people’s perception of the Colorado River system right now”, he said. John Hickenlooper have declared emergencies over it.

“There’s no question that they haven’t been taking this as seriously as the state has”, Flynn said.

Dokoupil lectured: “After this, I think they may revisit the conversation”.

Agency officials said they were consulting with representatives of the Navajo Nation. “It’s going to be something that affects us for months to come”.

Wood said common sense tells him some of the heavy metals in the mine wastewater will eventually drop into backwaters and eddies, which are near campsites along the river-running routes.

“Of all the toxic metals, it goes into plants like insane”, he said.

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.

The Navajo Nation in its declaration stated the toxic spill will have long-lasting and unknown impacts on the tribe’s water system and wells.