Lake CdA more polluted than Animas River?!
When the Environmental Protection Agency unleashed a plume of pollution into Colorado’s Animas River earlier this month, it garnered huge national attention. The spill was significant: Three million gallons of mining waste laced with heavy metals spewed from the Gold King Mine. Levels of lead and arsenic spiked to levels way beyond what’s safe for human health. They still linger to an unknown degree in the sediment. But it’s hard to call the incident catastrophic. At its worst, near the headwaters, the river’s pH was 4.8, or roughly equivalent to a cup of black coffee. Downstream in Durango, it never dipped below 6.8, says the independent Mountain Studies Institute — just a smidge more acidic than pure, neutral water with a pH of 7. Elsewhere in the West, people regularly live alongside and play in waterways at least as polluted as the Animas/Krista Langlois, High Country News. More here.
