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Toxic waste trickles toward New Mexico's water sources

Councilman

Councilman

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Toxic waste trickles toward New Mexico's water sources -- latimes.com

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.
By Frank Clifford
November 1, 2009

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.
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A lot has changed when it comes to the handling of all contaminants since 1943 but the seepage into the water supply and it's migration should call into question the long term storage in Yucca Mountain NV. with it's reported earth quake faults; Earthquake Fault Possible Beneath Yucca Mountain Site - Las Vegas Now

I wonder what is really known about the connections in aquifers oin the west and the migration of contaminants under ground over very long periods. Here we're talking about 66 years. What about what could happen in 600 years.(I resisted saying 666years for obvious reasons.)
Don't we owe it to future generations to think about it in very long terms? I'm not a wacko greenie by any stretch but I believe in being responsible, and that does not require fear tactics and draconian measures that cost and arm and a leg to implement. It's a matter of being logical and responsible and thinking before we go off the deep end. A little brain power can keep things safe clean and create jobs in the process.
 
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