Mapping the Puerco River Watershed and Water Resources Potentially Affected By Uranium Contamination in New Mexico using ArcGIS

Lani Tsinnajinnie

CE 547

Final Project Report

Background

The Puerco River is an intermittent waterway located in the Lower Colorado River Basin. It flows east to west from McKinley County, NM to Arizona through the Navajo and Apache counties.

Objective

The objective of this project is to map the Puerco River watershed basin and potentially affected communities and water resources from contamination in the River. The UTM Zone 13 projection will be used for this project because the area covered in this project is in New Mexico.

This first layout (above) shows the relative location of the Upper and Lower Puerco hydrologic units relative to the states of New Mexico and Arizona and the hydrologic unit region that they lie in. The Puerco River lies in the Lower Colorado River region. The Upper and Lower Puerco hydrologic units lie near and across the New Mexico-Arizona state border.

The second layout shows the flow accumulation calculated from the DEMs. This layout shows flow from the Upper and Lower Puerco hydrologic units is accumulating in the Puerco River and eventually accumulates into the Little Colorado River.

The third layout shows the Lower and Upper Puerco hydrologic units and the Puerco River layers overlaying a hillshade and TIN layer showing elevation. This layout shows the Upper Puerco hydrologic unit is in a higher elevation than the Lower Puerco unit. From the flow direction and flow accumulation calculation and from this layout, an assumption can be made that the Puerco River is flowing from East to West.

This final layout shows the flow lines in the Puerco hydrologic units that flow to the Puerco River. It also shows the water bodies (lakes, ponds, tanks) in the Puerco hydrologic regions. Additionally, it shows the populated places in New Mexico within a close vicinity to the Puerco River. Using calculations in the ‘Select by Location’ feature in ArcMap, the number of populated places and water bodies within the Puerco hydrologic units can be calculated. 37 communities or populated places in New Mexico lie within the Puerco River watershed and could be potentially affected by any sort of contamination in the Puerco River depending on their locations and areas of runoff. 1,619 water bodies also lie within the Puerco River watershed and could also be potentially affected by contamination in the Puerco River depending on runoff, location, and the type of water body.

Conclusion and Future Work

This project can be used as a beginning study of the Puerco River watershed and areas of potential contamination using ArcGIS .

Effects from a uranium mill tailings spill that took place in Church Rock in 1979 could very well have spread beyond just the Puerco River watershed, as the Puerco River feeds into the Little Colorado River. Church Rock is located far upstream in the Puerco River so any contamination probably spread throughout most of the Puerco River. Additional data and analysis is needed to do a better assessment of the spread of contamination in the Puerco River.

Future work includes gathering additional data such as groundwater units and associated wells connected to the Puerco River system, points for surrounding communities in Arizona, and areas of remediation, if any. Additionally, a load grid for uranium mill tailings contamination data should be created to input into the model to determine extent and degree of contamination.

References

New Mexico Resource Geographic Information System Program. Data available online: http://rgis.unm.edu

Robinson, Paul (2004). “Uranium Mill Tailings Remediation Performed by the US DOE: An Overview.” Retrieved May 2009 from the World Wide Web: http://www.sric.org/U_Mill_Tailing_Remediation_05182004.pdf

Shuey, Chris (1992). “Contaminant Loading on the Puerco River: A Historical Overview.” Retrieved May 2009 from the World Wide Web: http://www.sric.org/uranium/PUERCO92.html

United States Geological Survey. “National Map Seamless Server”. Available online: http://seamless.usgs.gov/index.php.

USGS National Hydrography Dataset. Available online: http://nhd.usgs.gov/