California IN BRIEF : REDDING : Water Plant Aimed at Mine’s Toxic Flow

A water treatment plant to begin operating in Shasta County next week is expected to reduce toxic mine drainage that threatens fish in the Sacramento River. The plant is being installed at the 130-year-old Iron Mountain Mine, nine miles northwest of Redding, which the Environmental Protection Agency has designated a Superfund site and a major source of river pollution. The 4,000-acre mine produced gold, silver, copper and iron from the 1860s to the 1960s, but now is mostly idle. Water seeps into the mine and washes out toxic levels of copper, lead, cyanide, arsenic and other compounds into streams that empty into the river.