The Colorado governor says the contamination in the Animas River is clearing up.
Last week, a cleanup crew from the Environmental Protection Agency working along the Animas River in southwestern Colorado accidentally broke through a dam, causing a nearby abandoned mine to spew 3 million gallons of wastewater into the river.
Speaking with reporters at the scene of the spill on Tuesday morning, August 11, EPA representative Hayes Griswold said an EPA cleanup team was attempting to remove material from the roof of the Gold King Mine on August 5 in order to stick a pipe into the top for drainage, according to USA Today.
EPA officials said the shocking orange plume has already dissipated and that the leading edge of the contamination can not be seen in the downstream stretches of the San Juan River or Lake Powell. Its sprawling reservation is traversed by the San Juan River, which flows through southeastern Utah into Lake Powell.
None of this has eased concerns or quelled anger among people in the arid Southwest who depend on this water for their survival. Municipalities such as Farmington, New Mexico, draw their drinking water from the Animas.
Shiprock, a small part of the Navajo Nation, which is the size of West Virginia, is one of its largest farming communities and it relies heavily upon irrigation from the San Juan River. Begaye said “Decades. That is totally, completely unsettling”, Begaye said. “This river, the San Juan, is our lifeline, not only in a spiritual sense but also it’s an economic base that sustains the people that live along the river. I’m just not comfortable”, McGrath told the governor. “And we have yet to hear from the Obama administration”.
Colorado and New Mexico have made disaster declarations, the Navajo Nation has issued an emergency, and the wastewater will soon enter Utah. New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, however, said she would not take anything off the table and that the EPA should be held to the same standards as industry. “That said, our primary role right now is, that’s behind us, and how are we going to move forward?”
“Something did go wrong here”, Colorado Senator Cory Gardner said, according to the Wall Street Journal, “and here we are, a week later, and there still remains a lack of understanding not only with what happened, but what’s actually at stake in terms of public health”. 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.
Tests show some of the metals have settled to the bottom and would dissolve only if conditions became acidic, which Mr Cohen said is not likely. “They’re sowing more confusion in the area than they are resolving it”.
The ensuing flow of polluted water down Cement Creek and into the Animas River has been painful to watch, notes Judith Kohler, spokeswoman for the National Wildlife Federation office in Denver.
DEQ says they are waiting to test water samples, which they should receive Wednesday.
As a precaution, state and federal officials ordered public water systems to turn off intake valves as the plume passes.
David Ostrander, director of the EPA’s emergency preparedness program, said during a media call Tuesday afternoon that EPA workers continue to treat mine wastewater in four retention ponds at the Colorado mine before releasing it into a tributary that feeds into the Animas River.
