cedarslug
Steelhead
Polluting WA gold mine broke environmental laws 3,539 times
A federal judge ruled that the owner of the Buckhorn Mountain mine in Okanogan County is responsible for cleanup and could face over $100 million in fines.
Worth a read, and here's just an excerpt:
The primary groundwater flow from Buckhorn Mountain is to the south and southeast. That water seeps into six small creeks nearby that flow east into two larger creeks that flow into the Kettle River, which heads east along the north side of Ferry County and into the Columbia River, roughly 70 miles from Buckhorn Mountain. This is bull-trout fishing country.
Scattered around the 50-acre site and just outside of it are roughly 50 state water-monitoring sites — a few on surface water, but most monitoring wells are 20 to 700 feet underground. In monthly reports, about 20% of these — primarily in the south and southeast — have shown pollutant limits above the state’s permitted levels. In November 2019, one groundwater monitoring well showed chloride levels eight times the state’s limits.
Crown also has an extensive network of monitoring wells around the area.
If the pollution continues at its present levels, fish will die because polluted water from the mine seeps into the neighboring creeks and streams that flow into the Kettle River, according to a 2021 Crosscut interview with the Attorney General’s Office.
