Colorado River Tops 2004 "Most Endangered" List

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: (Back to Press Releases)
April 14, 2004

Flagstaff, Az. -- American Rivers, a national river protection and advocacy organization, today announced it has designated the Colorado River as America's Most Endangered River for 2004. The annual report's focus is on rivers facing the most uncertain futures, not on those with the worst chronic problems.

This somber and dubious achievement comes as a result of increasing concerns about radioactive, human and other toxic waste that is polluting the river that carved the Grand Canyon and provides precious drinking water for Colorado, Utah, Nevada, California, and Arizona.

Three primary sources of pollution create much of the concern. The most dangerous is the seepage of radioactive waste from the Atlas Mill site near Moab, Utah where approximately 110,000 gallons of radioactive groundwater leak into the Colorado each day from a crude 12 million ton radioactive waste pile located on the riverbank. The US Department of Energy (DOE) will decide the fate of the wastes this year when it completes an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Atlas site. Farther downstream, septic tank waste from overloaded systems in burgeoning riverfront communities such as Lake Havasu City, Arizona are allowing high concentrations of nitrates to leach into ground water and the Colorado River. In addition, a highly toxic chemical, ammonium perchlorate, is threatening the river from a defunct military facility in Henderson, Nevada.

Grand Canyon Trust has been actively engaged in the Atlas Mill issue and monitoring other Colorado River and Plateau issues for nearly twenty years and hopes that this negative designation will prove to be a positive force by focusing public attention on the problems and opening up a dialogue about how to restore this river that is critically important to tens of millions of people.

"For almost fifty years, the radioactive uranium wastes at Moab have been fouling the water of the Colorado River," stated Bill Hedden, Executive Director of the Grand Canyon Trust. "Now is the time to move them to a saner place, and we are encouraged that the DOE's proposal to place them in a deep, underground salt formation may be the safest and most cost-effective alternative. The agency must expedite studies of this plan to determine if it is the ideal solution."

In addition to the Atlas Mill, septic waste and perchlorate issues, the Trust has identified four other declining resource concerns on the Colorado River and in the Grand Canyon that must be addressed in order to restore the river to a healthy condition. Resources that are in jeopardy include: native fish such as the humpback chub, an endangered four-million-year-old fish found only in the Colorado River, whose population has been reduced by 67% since 1989; native riparian communities that are being degraded by the invasion of non-native species; sediment flows, the reduction of which are decimating the habitat for aquatic and riparian species; and archeological and cultural sites which are imperiled by the lack of sediment flow as well.

The Grand Canyon Trust is one of 25 stakeholders in the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program (AMP), a collaborative process the Trust is working within which recommends to the Secretary of the Interior management actions that will protect Colorado River resources.

The Trust is firmly committed to working with other AMP stakeholders to resolve these issues and looks forward to the day when the Colorado River is restored and its well-deserved status as one of America's truly great rivers is no longer in jeopardy.

To view the American Rivers 2004 Report click here.

For more information please contact:

• Bill Hedden
  928-774-7488 ext. 202
  hedden@grandcanyontrust.org
  
  

### END NEWS RELEASE ###

(Back to Press Releases)