Costs of Colorado waste spill remain unknown

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency is visiting Farmington, New Mexico, to see how officials are dealing with the fallout from the Colorado mine waste spill that traveled downstream on the Animas and San Juan Rivers. The 3 million gallons of toxic waste, including arsenic, lead and iron, that the EPA accidentally released Aug. 5 has disrupted the lives of thousands who live along the river.

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy is scheduled to meet with state, local and tribal officials Thursday and address reporters on a trail along the Animas River. She says her agency takes full responsibility for the spill.

The federal government has vowed to pay for the clean up, but the full consequences of the leak remain unknown. The heavy metals that passed down the river in a plume left residue on the riverbed. In the long term, the next time the river swells it could pull those toxic remnants back up again.

"There will be a source of these contaminants in the rivers for a long time," said hydrologist Tom Myers, who runs a Nevada-based consulting business. "Every time there's a high flow, it will stir it up and it will be moving those contaminants downstream."

McCarthy’s visit to Farmington follows her stop upstream in Durango, Colorado, on Wednesday. There, she said she was heartbroken by the spill and announced that investigation field work would stop at mines nationwide as the agency looks into what led to last week's disaster. Colorado says it's now safe for Durango to process river water into drinking water.

The plume of heavy metals flowed into southwest Colorado's Animas River and into the San Juan River in New Mexico, causing untold millions in economic disruptions and damages in three states — to rafting companies, Native American farmers unable to irrigate, municipal water systems and possibly water well owners.

Just as the extent of the damage remains unclear, so does the cost of clean up.

"We have to be vigilant as attorneys general, as the lawyers for the state, as protectors of the environment, to be sure that the assurances that we received today from the Environmental Protection Agency are the same in two years, in five years, even 10 years when we discover what the damage to the environment actually is," said Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman after she and her counterparts from neighboring states gathered Wednesday in Durango.

Coffman and attorneys general from New Mexico and Utah vowed to ensure citizens and towns are compensated for immediate and long-term damages from the spill. The abandoned mine is just one of thousands across the west.

The Gold King spill was proving devastating to the Navajo Nation, which recently negotiated a settlement giving it rights to water from the San Juan River. The tribe plans to build a $20 million water treatment plant in northwestern New Mexico to take in the extra volume of water granted by the settlement and provide a clean drinking source to more of the 16,000 families on the reservation who still haul water to their homes.

Heavy metals already were present in the tribe's underground aquifers, and "now those same things are dumped in the river," complained Rex Kontz, deputy general manager for the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority. He said meeting EPA standards for clean drinking water could double the plant's cost and require millions more in operating costs each year.

The EPA said it will be Monday at least, but perhaps take weeks more, before test results can help show what hazardous materials are in the water. The higher the concentrations, the higher the cost of removing heavy metals.

Navajo farmers were nervously waiting for someone to announce that it's safe to irrigate their crops again. Just two weeks without water could wipe out their corn and alfalfa just before harvest, which represents an entire year's salary for some farming families.

"This new water coming in was the avenue to creating new development and creating long-term sustainability," Kontz said. "Now it's almost like your legs were cut out from under you."

The Associated Press