Puerco River

Puerco River
Rio Puerco
Flowing near Puerco Pueblo,
in Petrified Forest National Park.
Country United States
States Arizona, New Mexico
Region Colorado Plateau
Source near Hosta Butte
 - location McKinley County, New Mexico
 - elevation 7,930 ft (2,417 m) [1]
 - coordinates 35°34′33″N 108°10′52″W / 35.57583°N 108.18111°W / 35.57583; -108.18111 [2]
Mouth Little Colorado River
 - location near Holbrook, Navajo County, Arizona
 - elevation 5,102 ft (1,555 m) [2]
 - coordinates 34°53′20″N 110°07′17″W / 34.88889°N 110.12139°W / 34.88889; -110.12139Coordinates: 34°53′20″N 110°07′17″W / 34.88889°N 110.12139°W / 34.88889; -110.12139 [2]
Length 167 mi (269 km) [3]
Basin 2,654 sq mi (6,874 km2)
Discharge for near Chambers, Arizona
 - average 70 cu ft/s (2 m3/s)
 - max 17,800 cu ft/s (504 m3/s)
 - min 0 cu ft/s (0 m3/s)
The mouth of the Puerco River is in north-central Arizona.
The mouth of the Puerco River
on the Little Colorado River, northeast-central Arizona

The Puerco River (Spanish): Rio Puerco) flows in northwestern New Mexico and northeastern Arizona, through arid terrain, including the Painted Desert.

Name

Although Rio Puerco means River of Pigs in Spanish, this usage in the SW United States is better translated as Muddy River.[4]

Geography

The intermittent river is the main tributary of the Little Colorado River, which is a tributary of the Colorado River. It drains an area of about 2,654 square miles (6,870 km2) and is 167 miles (269 km) long.[3] The river's average discharge is very low, less than 70 cubic feet per second (2.0 m3/s) in normal years, because its drainage basin is extremely dry. For most of the year, the Puerco River is a braided wash containing little or no water, although large flash floods can occur in downpours.

Course

The Puerco River in McKinley County, New Mexico.

The Puerco River headwaters are on the western slopes of the Continental Divide of the Americas, 0.5 miles (0.80 km) east of Hosta Butte, in McKinley County, New Mexico. It flows first north, and then west, through a wide and barren desert valley bordered by high rocky buttes and cliffs. It passes under Interstate 40, and receives the South Fork Puerco River from the right-south near Gallup. For most of its remaining course, I-40 and the former Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (now the BNSF Railway) tracks follow the river's valley.

The Puerco River crosses into Apache County, Arizona. It flows by Houck, Sanders, and Chambers, and then flows through the middle of Petrified Forest National Park, where Lithodendron Wash enters from the left-north. The river then flows southwest to its confluence with the Little Colorado River, near the eastern side of Holbrook.[5]

Discharge

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) operates a Puerco River stream gauge 1 mile (1.6 km) southwest of Chambers in Arizona. The maximum discharge recorded by this gauge between 1971 and 2009 was 17,800 cubic feet per second (500 m3/s) on Sept. 30, 1971, and the minimum discharge was often zero, from a drainage basin of 2,156 square miles (5,580 km2).[6]

Water pollution

Navajos in the Puerco River Valley have used surface waters in the Puerco River for livestock watering for decades.[7]

From the 1950s through the early 1980s, the Puerco River ran almost continuously from being fed by mining wastewater, some untreated, from uranium mines upstream.[8]

Radioactive spill

The Church Rock uranium mill spill is one of the worst radioactive spills in U.S. history. On July 16, 1979, a tailings pond at the Church Rock uranium mill, owned by United Nuclear Corporation, breached its dam and 93 million gallons (350,000 m3) of radioactive, acidic uranium tailings solution flowed into the North Fork of the Puerco River.[9] Approximately 1,100 short tons (1,000 t) of uranium mine waste contaminated 250 acres (100 ha) of land and up to 50 miles (80 km) of the Puerco River.[10][11]

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to
Puerco River.

References

  1. ↑ Source elevation derived from Google Earth search using GNIS source coordinates.
  2. 1 2 3 "Puerco River". Geographic Names Information System (GNIS). United States Geological Survey. February 8, 1980. Retrieved May 28, 2010.
  3. 1 2 "The National Map". U.S. Geological Survey. Retrieved Feb 25, 2011.
  4. ↑ Garland D. Bills, Neddy A. Vigil. "The Spanish Language of New Mexico and Southern Colorado: A Linguistic Atlas". University of New Mexico Press.
  5. ↑ USGS Topo Maps for United States (Map). Cartography by United States Geological Survey. ACME Mapper. Retrieved 2010-10-01.
  6. ↑ "Water-Data Report 2009: 09396100 Puerco River near Chambers, AZ" (pdf). United States Geological Survey. Retrieved May 29, 2010.
  7. ↑ Chris Shuey Contaminant Loading on the Puerco River A Historical Overview Southwest Research and Information Center, October 14, 1992
  8. ↑ Gault, Ramona (September 13, 1989), "Navajos inherit a legacy of radiation", In These Times, Chicago
  9. ↑ Pasternak, Judy (2010). Yellow Dirt: A Poisoned Land and a People Betrayed. Free Press. p. 149. ISBN 1416594825.
  10. ↑ Brendan Giusti, Radiation Spill in Church Rock Still Haunts 30 Years Later, The Daily Times (Farmington, New Mexico), July 16, 2009, Section: Local
  11. ↑ Carl Jensen, Project Censored (U.S.) 20 Years of Censored News Seven Stories Press, July 1, 2003, p. 84, ISBN 1-888363-52-5


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