There is more than meets the eye lingering on the banks of the Animas River. A clean-up of the area stretching from the Durango Dog Park to Bodo Industrial Park was completed in 1991. However, much of the legacy of uranium mining and milling is still in place on the west side of the Animas.

In its 2003 “Verification Monitoring Report for Durango, Colorado,” the Department of Energy revealed that several serious pollutants are still not within “regulatory levels” for the area.

According to modeling:

• Uranium concentrations are expected to decrease to regulatory standards in 80 years

• Manganese and sulfate levels should decrease to project standards in 70 to 100 years

• Selenium concentrations should be acceptable within 100 years.

• Cadmium concentrations are not expected to be acceptable within 100 years and contingency remedies may be necessary.

• Molybdenum concentrations should decrease to regulatory standards in five years.

– Will Sands