For years, environmental groups have wanted to clean up the creek, and the many other streams polluted by the nation’s estimated 160,000 abandoned hardrock mines, but the fear of getting sued has scared them away. Under the Clean Water Act, any party that tries to clean up a stream polluted by an old mine but doesn’t succeed in bringing it to minimum water quality standards could be held liable. Repeated attempts to amend the Act to shelter these groups from lawsuits have failed, and now lawmakers are taking a new approach: lobbying the Environmental Protection Agency to make the change internally.
http://www.hcn.org/hcn/blogs/goat/its-a-hardrock-life
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