Free Republic

A critical power structure near Bluff looks like a sinking Leaning Tower of Pisa after waves of floods have inundated southeast Utah over the past week. Now, as the area braces for another rise in the San Juan River, Bluff Mayor Josh Ewing is worried that a new surge could cause the damaged power pole to collapse. If it does, he said, hundreds of families in Navajo Nation communities to the south could lose power and Bluff could lose cell service for “a very long time.” Rains roared down washes in southeast Utah on Sunday and Monday, flooding Bluff’s post...

The head of the New Mexico Environment Department blasted the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday during a legislative committee meeting in the New Mexico Legislature, saying federal officials are downplaying the long-term effects of the Gold King Mine spill. ... Environment Secretary Ryan Flynn told members of the House agriculture committee that the agency has been pressuring communities to get behind a proposal that calls for monitoring water quality for only a year. Flynn also argued that the proposal would look at whether the water is safe for recreation rather than digging deeper into recurring spikes in the readings...

On Aug. 5, 2015, contractors for the Environmental Protection Agency accidentally released 3 million gallons of contaminated wastewater into Cement Creek, a tributary of the Animas River. Six months later, questions about the effects of spring runoff, Superfund status and remediation remain unanswered.N.M. official blasts EPA over Gold King spill‘When storm events occurred, the sediment was remobilized’ Where the Animas goes The Gold King Mine blowout on Aug. 5, 2015 sent 3 million gallons of wastewater into the Animas River, which flows into the San Juan River. The San Juan flows into the Colorado River. The Colorado River is dammed,...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Anger was mounting Monday at the federal Environmental Protection Agency over the massive spill of millions of gallons of toxic sludge from a Colorado gold mine that has already fouled three major waterways and may be three times bigger than originally reported. An 80-mile length of mustard-colored water -- laden with arsenic, lead, copper, aluminum and cadmium -- is working its way south toward New Mexico and Utah, following Wednesday's accidental release from the Gold King Mine, near Durango, when an EPA cleanup crew destabilized a dam of loose rock lodged in the mine. The crew was...