Flood Watch Stays Up Across the Four Corners As Rivers Recede From Record Highs

The National Weather Service kept a flood watch in place on Sunday for much of the Four Corners region — the corner country of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah — even as the San Juan and Animas rivers fell back from record highs, The Associated Press reported. Another round of showers and thunderstorms was expected over the region, keeping the watch up while the rivers recede and the cleanup begins in the communities the water has already been through.

More than 2 million people were under flood watches on Saturday, USA Today reported, as the two rivers ran at record levels through northwestern New Mexico and southwestern Colorado. The San Juan and the Animas meet at Farmington, the largest city in San Juan County, New Mexico, and it was San Juan County that took much of the water. Rain totals topped 5 inches in places across the region.

Receding Water, Contaminated Mud

In San Juan County, the water is going down, but what it leaves behind is a problem of its own. County spokesman Devin Neeley told The Associated Press that the floodwaters are receding, but that the mud and silt deposited by the rivers are contaminated with sewage from failed waste plants. Restoring power across the county will take days, Neeley said. He also said he was not aware of any loss of life in the flooding.

The contamination reached the river itself in Bloomfield, a San Juan County city on the San Juan River east of Farmington. Bloomfield suspended operations at its water reclamation facility, and untreated wastewater entered the San Juan River. The reclamation facility is the plant that treats the city’s sewage before the treated water is released; with operations suspended, wastewater went into the river untreated.

Rescues In The Hundreds

The flooding has kept rescue crews working since the middle of the week. The Associated Press reported that rescuers have carried out “at least a couple hundred” rescues since Wednesday — a figure officials described as too many to count precisely. Twenty of those rescues came in a single night in San Juan County alone, county officials told USA Today.

The evacuations were reported in two different ways as the water rose. Local reports said about 600 households were ordered to evacuate around Farmington and across San Juan County. An earlier account from San Juan County officials put the number at about 30 people evacuated, alongside more than 3,000 electrical outages. The two figures were reported at different points in the flooding and measure different things — households ordered to leave against people counted as evacuated — and both are set out in the box below, as reported.

Emergencies Declared Across Three States

The official response began before the weekend. Colorado Governor Jared Polis verbally declared a state emergency on Thursday. Local emergencies were declared in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, and in Hurricane, Utah. The declarations came as the rain continued over the Four Corners and the rivers climbed toward the record levels they reached on Saturday.

On Sunday, the immediate question in the region is the weather still to come. The flood watch the National Weather Service kept in place means conditions remain in place for more flooding, with another round of showers and thunderstorms expected, even as the San Juan and the Animas fall. In San Juan County, the work in front of residents and officials is the receding water, the contaminated mud it leaves behind, the failed waste plants, and a power restoration that the county says will take days.

Sources: The Associated Press; USA Today.