Questa baseline and pre-mining ground-water quality investigation. 5. Well installation, water-level data, and surface- and ground-water geochemistry in the Straight Creek drainage basin, Red River Valley, New Mexico, 2001-03

The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the New Mexico Environment Department, is investigating the pre-mining ground-water chemistry at the Molycorp molybdenum mine in the Red River Valley, northern New Mexico. The primary approach is to determine the processes controlling ground-water chemistry at an unmined, off-site, proximal analog. The Straight Creek drainage basin, chosen for this purpose, consists of the same quartz-sericite-pyrite altered andesitic and rhyolitic volcanic rock of Tertiary age as the mine site. The weathered and rugged volcanic bedrock surface is overlain by heterogeneous debris-flow deposits that interfinger with alluvial deposits near the confluence of Straight Creek and the Red River. Pyritized rock [...]