Hardrock Mining Companies Nation's Largest Source Of toxic Pollution

The 1872 Mining Law is inadequate to regulate modern mining, which uses chemicals such as cyanide to leach metals from rock, leaving the landscape scarred with toxic tailings piles and pit lakes. According to the EPA, hardrock mining has contaminated the headwaters of 40 percent of watershed in the West, and cleaning up the nation's hundreds of thousands of abandoned hardrock mines will cost over $50 billion.
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