[CPEO-BIF] Sulphur Bank Mine, Clearlake, California

[Lenny Siegel <LSiegel@cpeo.org>]

‘Like a World War II battlefield’: How one of Northern California’s most polluted properties may finally be cleaned up
The EPA is starting a $94 million project to reduce a toxic threat to people exposed to mercury and arsenic for 150 years

By PAUL ROGERS 
Bay Area News Group (CA)
February 25, 2024

The legacies of California’s 1849 Gold Rush and the relentless search for gold that continued decades later are well known: the rise of San Francisco; statehood; Wells Fargo; Levi’s jeans; a Bay Area football team named after the fortune-seeking miners.

But along the shores of Clear Lake, just north of Napa Valley’s famed wineries, is another gold-rush legacy: toxic pollution.

From the 1860s until it closed in 1957, the Sulphur Bank Mine was one of the largest mercury mines in the United States. Gold miners in the Sierra Nevada used the mercury dug from its deep tunnels and craggy cavities to separate gold from the ore that held it.

…

For the entire article, see
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/02/25/like-a-world-war-ii-battlefield-how-one-of-northern-californias-most-polluted-properties-may-finally-be-cleaned-up

—

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
A project of the Pacific Studies Center
LSiegel@cpeo.org
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650-961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org
Author: DISTURBING THE WAR: The Inside Story of the Movement to Get Stanford University out of Southeast Asia - 1965–1975 (See http://a3mreunion.org)

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