EPA pays $1.75M to clean up Amador mine tailings

Sacramento Business Journal - by Celia Lamb Staff writer

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Honeywell International Inc. and land developers have settled a two-year dispute over who should pay the $4.3 million cost of removing arsenic from a former Amador County gold mine near a residential neighborhood.

The Central Eureka Mine in Sutter Creek produced gold worth an estimated $36 million from 1855 to 1958. The miners were long gone when Nehemiah Development Co. bought property nearby for the Mesa de Oro residential development in 1977.

But the "mesa" was actually an 11-acre mound of crushed ore dumped from the mine. Houses were built on and downhill from the former mine tailings. A separate tailings pile was found on the nearby Allen Ranch.

In 1994, a contractor digging a trench in the residential area complained of skin sores, possibly from arsenic exposure from the tailings. The EPA declared the mine and surrounding property a Superfund site. From 1995 to 2001, the EPA put up fences, took out contaminated soil from about 55 residential yards, replaced it with clean fill and built a sediment basin to capture contaminated run-off.

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