The Durango-based San Juan Citizens Alliance has hired a full-time advocate for the Animas River.
“We didn’t have someone who was limited exclusively to the Animas River,” said Mark Pearson, executive director of SJCA. “This basically allows us to elevate the significance of the river.”
From the early 2000s to 2011, the SJCA had an employee whose primary job was to focus on the waterways of Southwest Colorado.
During that time, Pearson said the alliance was able to make headway on conservation efforts on the Dolores River, work on Wild and Scenic designations for some rivers and push the Hermosa Creek Watershed Protection Act.
However, in 2011, SJCA was forced to let go of a position because of budgetary issues. The alliance was still involved in the issue, Pearson said, but it was divided among staffers with other obligations.
But after an EPA-contracted crew triggered a blowout at the Gold King Mine in August 2015, releasing 3 million gallons of bright-orange wastewater down the Animas and San Juan rivers, the alliance realized it was time to resurrect the position.
In December 2015, SJCA’s then-executive director, Dan Olson, announced the alliance would start planning for an Animas River advocate.
“This incident highlighted our desire to be involved in the discussion of the Animas headwaters,” Olson said at the time. “I don’t feel like (SJCA) has been as vocal as we’d like to be. And that’s an issue we’re solving by planning for this hire.”
This January, SJCA hired Marcel Gaztambide as its “Animas Riverkeeper.”
Gaztambide, a Salt Lake City native, earned a Bachelor of Science in geoscience from the University of Utah in 2015, and for five years, he worked for the Journal of the American Chemical Society as an editorial assistant.
As an undergraduate, Gaztambide conducted human health and water-quality studies in the Ponce Enriquez mining district in Ecuador, focusing on gold mining’s impact to ecosystems and communities.
He worked as a geologist for the United States Geological Survey in South Carolina before taking a job at SJCA.
“I fell in love with the science of water quality, but I was frustrated not being able to use what I was learning to impact policy decisions,” he said. “It’s important for scientists to be objective, but there was an itch I needed to scratch.”
Gaztambide said some of his main objectives at SJCA are to inform the public of the work local research groups are doing on the watershed and to keep people up to date with the activity at the EPA’s Superfund site around Silverton.
He also intends to push for recreational opportunities on the Animas River, including promoting more river runners to take the trip from Durango to Farmington, a 50-plus-mile journey.
“There are so many people doing really great things for the Animas,” he said. “It’s obvious folks really care for this watershed.”
SJCA is partnering with Waterkeeper Alliance, an international nonprofit group that advocates for clean water. The Waterkeeper Alliance started in 1966 as a grass-roots movement in New York’s Hudson Valley and now has more than 300 advocates worldwide who are involved with more than 2.5 million square miles of rivers.
“Waterkeeper Alliance is thrilled to have San Juan Citizens Alliance as the eyes, ears and voice for this vital watershed and community,” said Robert F. Kennedy Jr., president of the alliance, in a prepared statement. “Every community deserves to have swimmable, drinkable and fishable water, and San Juan Citizens Alliance is the right leader to fight for clean water in the region.”
Pearson said with the new hire, the alliance will also be more involved, and it will bring to light the workings of the Southwest Water Conservation District, the agency tasked with developing water projects on the Animas River.
“We want to help engage more people with (SWCD), the entity that collects tax money from all of us,” Pearson said. “How do they spend that? How can we influence them to spend it in ways that are good for the environment and recreation?”
jromeo@durangoherald.com
