Study: Shocking Nevada water contamination

In a shocking report in the Los Angeles Times, a scientist commissioned by Nye County to study the impact of nearly a thousand nuclear bomb tests has reported that 1.6 trillion gallons of water under Nevada are contaminated.

“It is one of the largest resource losses in the country,” said Nevada hydrogeologist Thomas S. Buqo. “Nobody [in the 1950s] thought to say, ‘You are destroying a natural resource.’ ”

The Times reported that 1.6 trillion gallons “is as much water as Nevada is allowed to withdraw from the Colorado River in 16 years—enough to fill a lake 300 miles long, a mile wide and 25 feet deep. At today’s prices, that water would be worth as much as $48 billion if it had not been fouled, Buqo said.”

And the polluted water is on the move, traveling southwest, though migration is so slow that officials say there is no danger. Of course, that is what officials said about the bomb tests in the 1950s and ’60s, too.