Santa Fe's new drinking water supply source come January, like it or not, is downstream of nasties but some folks say don't worry. You'll be dead before it matters. Basically. From the Santa Fe New Mexican:
The Buckman diversion point is 3.3 miles below a spot where a canyon once used as a Los Alamos National Laboratory waste dump empties into the Rio Grande. A recent U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report identified 40 "high-priority" dump sites in Los Alamos and Pueblo canyons that can discharge contaminants into the Rio Grande during floods.
On Nov. 1, LANL received a storm-water discharge permit from the state Environment Department to continue letting water flow across dozens of lab waste sites and through canyons to the Rio Grande.
In addition, the Buckman river diversion point is downstream from a Superfund site in Española.
But don't worry. We got a guy who is gonna sit at the switch and turn it off when it rains.
A key and unique feature of the river-diversion project is an early-warning system that will allow the operators to shut off flows from the river during storm-water and flood events.
That certainly is a "key" and "unique" feature. I'm glad they didn't say innovative.
Over the last year I've talked to a couple public officials about negotiating a spill agreement with places like Rio Rancho and further up but the response was that these entitites don't have any interest or motivation to negotiate.
Posted by: suz | Thursday, December 09, 2010 at 10:03 AM