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Toxic waste trickles toward New Mexico’s water sources: Radioactive debris has been found in canyons that drain into the Rio Grande, but officials at the Los Alamos National Laboratory say there’s no health risk

Posted by: Maven on November 1, 2009 at 8:01 am

From the Los Angeles Times:

“Reporting from Los Alamos, N.M. – More than 60 years after scientists assembled the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, lethal waste is seeping from mountain burial sites and moving toward aquifers, springs and streams that provide water to 250,000 residents of northern New Mexico.

Isolated on a high plateau, the Los Alamos National Laboratory seemed an ideal place to store a bomb factory’s deadly debris. But the heavily fractured mountains haven’t contained the waste, some of which has trickled down hundreds of feet to the edge of the Rio Grande, one of the most important water sources in the Southwest.

So far, the level of contamination in the Rio Grande has not been high enough to raise health concerns. But the monitoring of runoff in canyons that drain into the river has found unsafe concentrations of organic compounds such as perchlorate, an ingredient in rocket propellent, and various radioactive byproducts of nuclear fission. …”

November 1, 2009 · Filed Under Colorado River & the Southwest

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One Response to “Toxic waste trickles toward New Mexico’s water sources: Radioactive debris has been found in canyons that drain into the Rio Grande, but officials at the Los Alamos National Laboratory say there’s no health risk”

  1. dfb on November 2nd, 2009 1:36 am

    The link is missing: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-radiation-newmexico1-2009nov01,0,6423820.story

    I knew someone who grew up in near Santa Clara Pueblo/Espanola. She had ovarian cancer at 17. Her family swears it is due to pollutants from Los Alamos. :-(

    btw: Here is one about methane in the water supply in Colorado, perhaps due to mining. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_methane_mystery

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