New Mexico Declares State of Emergency After Toxic Waste Spill
By Albuquerque Journal. Gov. Susana Martinez said New Mexico will declare a state of emergency this afternoon as a result of the 3-million-gallon yellow plume of toxic waste dumped into the Animas River and making its way through this state into the San Juan River toward Lake Powell in Utah on Monday.
The governor’s declaration, which she said would occur this afternoon, follows other emergency declarations in Colorado and on the Navajo Nation Monday.
Some drinking water systems on the Navajo Nation, which spans parts of New Mexico, Arizona and Utah, have shut down their intake systems and stopped diverting water from the river. Drinking water is being hauled to some communities.
Navajo President Russell Begaye said the tribe is frustrated with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and he plans to take legal action. An EPA-supervised crew has been blamed for causing the spill while attempting to clean up the mine area.
Elsewhere, farms along the Animas and San Juan river valleys in northwestern New Mexico have no water to irrigate their crops after the spill. (Read more from “New Mexico Declares State of Emergency After Toxic Waste Spill” HERE)
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State of Emergency: Colorado Wastewater Leak Far Exceeds First Estimates
By Erin McClam. Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado declared a state of emergency on Monday, five days after a spill that sent toxic water seeping from an abandoned gold mine and turned a river orange.
The Environmental Protection Agency said Sunday that 3 million gallons of wastewater had spilled, three times as much as earlier estimates, and that health risks to humans and aquatic life were not yet clear.
Hickenlooper said the disaster declaration would allow him to use $500,000 from the state’s disaster fund to pay for the response. Some of the money will go toward towns and businesses hurt by the spill.
“We will work closely with the EPA to continue to measure water quality as it returns to normal, but also to work together to assess other mines throughout the state to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” the governor said in a statement.
On Wednesday, an EPA-supervised cleanup crew accidentally breached a debris dam that had formed inside the Gold King Mine, shuttered since 1923, sending a yellow-orange sludge leaking into the Animas River. (Read more from this story HERE)
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