Rio Puerco

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The Rio Puerco is a river in the American state of New Mexico, USA. The Rio Puerco Valley is notable for once hosting a significant numbers of Anasazi (Basketmaker II) people, many of them fleeing the collapse of the Chacoan civilization. Navajos in the Puerco River valley have used surface waters in the river for livestock watering purposes for decades.[1] As it carries high levels of sediment, the Rio Puerco is a major source of suspended particulate matter.^[1] Overgrazing has made the Rio Puerco Basin of central New Mexico one of the most eroded river basins of the western United States and has increased the high sediment content of the river.^[2]

The Rio Puerco arises on the eastern flanks of the San Mateo Mountains and flows south into the Rio Grande below Albuquerque after being joined by the Rio San Jose coming from from the west near Grants through the Laguna Reservation.

[edit] Nuclear Spill

In the worst nuclear spill in the nation's history, on July 16, 1979 100 million gallons of radioactive water containing uranium tailings breached into the north arm of the Rio Puerco from a tailing pond of a uranium mine owned by Kerr-McGee Company and United Nuclear Corporation. Approximately 1,100 tons of uranium mine waste contaminated 250 acres of land and up to 50 miles of the Rio Puerco.[2]

[edit] References