Mercury from Gold Rush Mining Still Washing Downstream In Floods
From the Los Angeles Times:
“The destructive environmental legacy of Gold Rush mining in the Sierra Nevada could last for thousands of years in the form of ongoing erosion of mercury-laced sediments, according to new research. … In a paper published online Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers tried to get a more precise idea of the deposition process.
“They examined historical streamflow and topographical data in the Yuba River corridor and ran models to gauge sediment distribution downstream of old gold fields.”