In this episode of The Barbless Fly Fishing Podcast we speak with The Sierra Fund’s Science Director Dr. Carrie Monohan about mercury contamination in some of California’s watersheds. We learn how it got there and what (if anything) can or is being be done to correct the problem.
By the mid-1850s, in areas with sufficient surface water, hydraulic mining was the most cost-effective method to recover large amounts of gold. To facilitate this, an estimated 13,000 TONS of mercury was shipped from California’s coastline to support hydro mining in the Sierras.
