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Illustration of a fingerprinting method to isolate Gold King Release Metals from Background Concentrations in the San Juan River
Citation:
Sullivan, Kate, Mike Cyterski, Chris Knightes, J. Washington, S. Kraemer, AND L. Prieto. Illustration of a fingerprinting method to isolate Gold King Release Metals from Background Concentrations in the San Juan River. New Mexico Water Institute Symposium on Animas River, Farmington, NM, June 20 - 22, 2017.
Impact/Purpose:
To be presented at the New Mexico Water Institute Symposium, 2nd Annual Conference on Environmental Conditionsof the Animas and San Juan Watersheds with Emphasis on Gold King Mine and Other Mine Waste Issues.
Description:
Detecting the Gold King Mine metals as the release plume passed was difficult once it entered the San Juan River on August 8, 2015. Plume metals concentrations were relatively low after 200 km of travel and deposition in the Animas River while background concentrations of the same metals were high due to high sediment load in the San Juan River. A metal fingerprinting technique was used to isolate metals in the Gold King release from background using the measured concentrations of the 23 TAL metals (Metal/Cynaide Target Analyte List) available with most water samples. The method associates the concentration of trace metals to that of aluminum or iron as representative of the dominant metals in the geologic substrate. Metal concentrations can be plotted together, as in Figure 1A, or the ratio can be computed for each sample for use as a value, such as plotted in time in Figure 1B. The correlation technique allowed maximum use of typically available water sample data to isolate Gold King metals as contaminants within the varying background concentrations associated with the natural sediments of the San Juan River.
