One of Northern California’s most polluted properties may be cleaned up
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. … Now a major effort has begun to clean up the historic mess and reduce health threats to people who have called the area home for thousands of years.