Uraniums found seeping into wells

Nature, not Los Alamos National Laboratory, is currently the leading source of uranium contamination in water around Espanola, Pojoaque, Nambe and Santa Fe. A number of private water wells around Pojoaque and Nambe have twice tested with uranium levels three to six times higher than the federal optional levels for safe drinking water. Meanwhile, Espanola shut down two wells this week after the condition Environment Department found elevated levels of uranium in the water supply. Espanola City Manager James Lujan said the wells will not be a difficulty in the future. "We plan to shut them off totally and plan to blend other wells that we do have in this area," said Lujan in a statement.

Around Santa Fe, a test of 475 wells last year found many with elevated uranium, but nothing compared to wells tested after in Nambe and Pojoaque. The testing and analysis were part of New Mexico Small Business Assistance project between LANL and the Good Water Company of Santa Fe, which designs, installs and services water cleansing systems. High uranium levels found in a half-dozen wells approximately the Nambe and Pojoaque corridor, between the Rio Grande and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, mirrored the results of a superior study conducted in 2005 by Santa Fe County and LANL. "One well in the corridor experienced with 60 times the EPA maximum contagion level for uranium," said Stephen Wiman, owner of Good Water Company.

Uranium is a radioactive serious metal that occurs naturally in some granites, ore bodies and sandstones found in the Southwest. It erodes and decays naturally into groundwater or as the result of uranium mining operation. It also is used as a division of nuclear research. People can be exposing to uranium through air, water and food. The U.S. Environmental defense Agency set 30 micrograms per liter as the safe drinking-water standard. Wells in the Pojoaque and Nambe corridor calculated with uranium levels from less than 30 to 1,800 micrograms per liter, according to Pat Longmire, a LANL groundwater chemist who helped examine the samples.