Contaminants in Santa Fe's future drinking water are not above "safe" levels. So there. But that's not cause for a sigh of relief say those who believe the sampling is too limited or flawed. Staci Matlock writes in The Santa Fe New Mexican:
The Environment Department has collected water samples from Los Alamos Canyon to the Buckman Direct Diversion site for three years, but the sampling hasn't gone well. Either the state has missed the high water flows out of Los Alamos Canyon or there haven't been any. "Los Alamos Canyon is the primary discharge point for the majority of Los Alamos waste that might carry plutonium and other radioactive waste," Ford-Schmid said. "So we don't have concrete evidence to contradict what they say in the report."
EPA found 60 high-priority sites that need to be cleaned up but don't hold your breath. Or swallow, for that matter.
good article in High Country News (Dec. 6 issue, p. 18 and http://www.hcn.org/issues/42.21/farmings-toxic-legacy )on legacy pesticides in areas where housing has replaced crop-bearing fields and orchards.... like where my house is. This danger escalates as city and suburban dwellers try their hand at growing their own veggies (I wondered why my tomatoes grew so pest-free.) Oh, the legacy pesticides are long lasting goodies like DDT, lead arsenate, dieldrin and chlordane --- organochlorines that "bind to organic matter in soil and fat cells of the organisms that consumer" them.
Posted by: suz | Monday, December 06, 2010 at 10:12 AM