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Animas River Spill Unleashes Potential Disaster on Navajo Nation

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

“We’re in the ‘red zone’ right now. Today, tomorrow is probably it,” says Duane "Chili" Yazzie, chapter president of the Shiprock Community on the Navajo Nation Reservation. “We’re about to lose a lot of our crops.”

Two weeks after an accident in an abandoned mine in Colorado caused more than 3 million gallons of toxic, heavy-metal-laden sludge to gush into the Animas River, disaster looms for the northern Navajo Nation.

Thousands of acres of farmland could dry up, and hundreds of families could see their primary source of income disappear.

Many miles of coastline along the San Juan River, a downstream tributary of the Animas, are designated agricultural areas, and many farmers there still are without a reliable source of uncontaminated water for their crops. Though the drinking-water ban was lifted on August 7 because residents receive their water from a reservoir upstream from where the Animas and San Juan rivers meet, the ban on accessing river water for crops and livestock still is in place.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which oversaw the contractor responsible for the spill, has been conducting water-quality tests for days along the hundreds of miles of affected waters and says most areas are at or close to pre-contamination levels. A sediment study from near Shiprock released Tuesday shows that “sample concentrations are trending toward pre-event conditions.”