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Unearthed: Excavating a wild cutthroat stream in Montana
Here’s a case study for why we need a new approach to abandoned mine cleanups The stamping mill from the old mine is a concrete ruin four miles up a dirt road from the town of Superior, Mont., population 800, in the Bitterroot Range. It’s astride a tributary that you could hop across, Flat Creek,…
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Time to modernize a relic of westward expansion
To clean up the West’s abandoned mines, we need funding and liability protections for Good Samaritans who want to do the work This month marks the 150-year anniversary of the 1872 Mining Law, a relic of westward expansion and Manifest Destiny. Under the law, which governs hardrock mining on public lands, the federal government gave…
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Reams Construction helps reclaim mine site in southwest Colorado
Recently, TU partnered Reams Construction on just this type of project. Reams won a competitive bid for the Atlas Mine and Mill reclamation project outside of Ouray, Colo. This project sits on the edge of a 100-year floodplain on Sneffels Creek where the former Atlas Mill stood years ago
Editor's note: TU works with some extremely talented characters while developing and completing projects in the field that help make fishing better. We are excited to bring you a series highlighting these Contractors. We hire equipment operators, truck drivers, laborers, material suppliers, engineers, technicians, and water testing labs. They are unique, talented, humble and some are downright wild, but TU’s contractors…
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Recovery through restoration
Now is the time to double down on our investment in the outdoors. This summer, the President and a bipartisan majority in Congress have coalesced around an old good idea. Namely, that we as a nation ought to be investing in our public lands. Our parks and forests and wilderness areas are a national endowment,…
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Bill to fund abandoned mine cleanup moving forward
Much-needed legislation to continue funding abandoned mine cleanup is moving forward in Congress. The House Natural Resources Committee this week approved H.R. 4248 by a voice vote following testimony from lead sponsor Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-PA). “H.R. 4248 would ensure that states and tribes can continue addressing challenges presented by historic mining operations,” Chris Wood, President…
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For the love of the Animas
By Ty Churchwell No one in Durango nor Silverton, Colo., will ever forget Aug. 5, 2015 — the day of the Gold King mine spill that sent 3 million gallons of ugly, toxic mine water down the Animas River in southwest part of the state. To say the accident was highly visible is an understatement. In today’s digital world, photos of the orange…
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Congressmen rally behind abandoned mine cleanup
Photo above: Congressman Dan Meuser (white shirt) and Earth Conservancy president/CEO Mike Dziak (speaking) during a tour of an abandoned mine reclamation site in Luzerne County, Pa. Earth Conservancy photo. There are moonscapes outside Wilkes-Barre, Pa.—piles of black culm left behind from coal mining operations before the dawn of regulation four decades ago. A local…
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