State sues Newmont Mining to recoup Empire Mine clean-up costs

The California Parks Department filed a lawsuit in federal court last Friday against Newmont Mining Corporation in an effort to recoup costs associated with the cleanup of Empire Mine State Historic Park.

The lawsuit -- filed by California Attosellers of used stone crushing equipments in egyptrney General Kamela Harris -- states that Newmont “owned and continue to have an interest in Empire Mine Park where they conducted mining operations, which have generated and continue to release hazardous substances.”

The environmental issues at the park center on the Magenta Drain, a large water channeling device built by Newmont to remove water from the approximately 370 miles of underground workings.

Magenta Drain flows into nearby Little Wolf Creek.

The mining company used a cyanide-and-mercury based process to extract gold from the ore, and combined with the extraction of large volumes of rock ore, heavy metals such as arsenic were released into the surrounding water and soil, according to the lawsuit.

Certain forms of arsenic are a known carcinogen and chronic exposure to the element can result in multiple human health hazards.

“The contamination left behind at Empire Mine Park by Newmont poses a substantial risk of harm to the environment and human health,” the lawsuit states.

In conjunction with Newmont, California State Parks installed a engineering project in November 2011 that used a natural filtration system to divest water siphoning from the Magenta Drain of iron, manganese and arsenic. The project alone cost $2 million and will likely cost about $20,000 in maintenance and the outcome of the lawsuit will decide who bears the burden of those and other remediation costs. The Empire Mine — one of the richest gold mines in California — closed in the mid-1950s after producing 175 tons of gold over a period of 106 years. The state bought the mine for a park in the mid-1970s and removed 46,000 tons of contaminated sediment from the area from 1986 to 1989. After filing a lawsuit in 2004, the environmental group Deltakeeper reached a compromise with state parks and Newmont Mining Corporation to clean up the Magenta Drain. Currently, the creek that runs through Memorial Park is cordoned off from the public as the three heavy metals have accumulated in the creek.

If and when clean up operations are performed, the fence will be removed and the public will once again be allowed to access the creek, Perry Myers, a project manager with the Department of Toxic Substances, told The Union in May.