Threats to Colorado River Cited

The Colorado River, a major source of drinking water for Southern California, is the nation’s most threatened waterway, according to the group American Rivers, which annually compiles a list of the nation’s 10 most endangered rivers.

The environmental group cites several risks to the Colorado, including radioactive waste from an abandoned uranium mine beside the river in southern Utah; chemical contamination from perchlorate, an ingredient in rocket fuel; and overburdened sewage systems in fast-growing river communities along the California-Arizona border.

The report says that water quality issues have been overshadowed by a long-running debate over water allocation from the river. But the group charges that increasing amounts of pollutants discharged into the river, along with dropping water levels, mean the Colorado River could pose a health threat to the millions of people who rely on it for drinking water.

“The Colorado River is at a crucial crossroads,” said Eric Eckl, a spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based American Rivers. “You have three problems, all coming to a head in the next 12 months. We want to alert the entire country to the situation along the Colorado.”

Bill Hedden, executive director of the Grand Canyon Trust, a conservation group that monitors the region surrounding the river in southern Utah and northern Arizona, said it was about time that water quality became a topic of public debate.

“Instead if a sky-is-falling report, this is focused on front-burner decisions that need to be made to deal with these problems,” he said.

In the case of the uranium mine near Moab, Utah, the Department of Energy is drafting a plan to clean up 12 million tons of radioactive material piled along the riverbank. Some of that material has been seeping into the groundwater, which, in turn, flows into the river.

At issue is how the radioactive waste will be disposed of. In its report, American Rivers maintains that unless the material is moved well away from the river, a major flood could inundate the site and wash tons of waste into the river.

One remedy being examined by the Department of Energy, however, would enclose the waste in a man-made cavern in a nearby salt deposit, a solution that agency officials believe would be cost-effective and safe.

The American Rivers report suggests that the mine site is responsible for gradually increasing levels of radioactivity measured hundreds of miles downstream.

But Don Metzler, the Department of Energy’s project manager for the mine cleanup, said naturally occurring uranium found in soil and rock causes higher measurements.

Metzler, a hydrogeologist, said the federal agency monitored the river water about a mile downstream of the site and had not measured any radioactivity associated with the mine. But even if there were only small amounts of contamination, he said, the mine waste needed to be stabilized.

“There is some uranium that discharges into the Colorado River, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s unacceptable,” Metzler said. “We’re working on a plan right now.”

Officials of the Metropolitan Water District, the agency that imports Southern California’s share of the river’s water, have been concerned about the mine waste for several years. But they said Tuesday they had not detected rising levels of radioactivity.

The presence of perchlorate in the river stems from a rocket fuel plant in Henderson, Nev. The Department of Defense is seeking exemptions from an array of federal environmental laws for the plant, and Eckl of American Rivers said a broad implementation of any exemptions could preclude removing perchlorate from the facility.

The MWD’s board of directors on Tuesday came out in opposition to the proposed exemptions, calling them bad public policy.

“Although the Department of Defense believes that the proposed exemptions are necessary to maintain military readiness, there are ways to maintain that readiness without jeopardizing water quality,” MWD Chief Executive Ronald R. Gastelum said.

The endangered rivers report also says that the Colorado River below Hoover Dam has a major concentration of septic-tank owners living near its banks. The overloaded system, it says, allows human waste to seep into groundwater and the river.

“This is gravity: Septic tanks are above the river, waste drains into the river,” said Robert Glennon, a professor of law at the University of Arizona who recently wrote a book about the relationship between groundwater and surface water. “You just can’t have that many septic tanks and that many [septic tank] leaching fields that close to the river.”

The report says that the Bush administration has slashed the budget of a federal program that provides funding for local communities to upgrade sewage treatment and water purification plants.