California Mercury Water Contamination Will Worsen With Climate Change: Study

"There’s a tremendous amount of sediment, and the concentrations are so high that it really is scary," said the lead author, Michael Singer, a researcher for University of St. Andrews in Scotland and University of California, Santa Barbara. "This is a problem of DDT proportions," he said, referring to the insecticide that inspired Rachel Carson's environmental book Silent Spring.
Left from unsafe gold mining practices of the 1800s, the mercury is trapped in sediment in the Sierra Nevada foothills. According to the study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, floods continue to force the toxic metal downstream, adding more mercury to the water system.
If climate change predictions are correct, floods and the amount of mercury-laden sediment they force into the water system are likely to increase.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/06/california-mercury-climate-change_n_4213167.html