Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Yuba alone received 10 million cubic yards of debris, and the 15-mile-long
lower reach between the canyon and its confluence with the Feather River
held six times that amount.
As early as 1856, just three years after miners turned the hoses on the
hillsides, a steamboat on its regular route between Sacramento and San
Francisco ran aground on the Hog's Back shoal in the Sacramento River.
The vessel had to wait hours for high tide before it could proceed. Steam-
boat Slough, where the shoal was rising, had collected more mining debris
than shallower waterways due to its deeper, more rapid conditions.
More grounded steamers, plus plumes of brown water and debris
downstream, brought about a ban on hydraulic mining in 1884. But this
was not before the industry had gone through a second boom with more
powerful equipment—and not before the first dams had been built to
check the debris flow. Indeed, the mining did not cease until after enough
mercury had been added to sluices to contaminate estuary fish more than
a century later. Between 1850 and 1884, miners worked more than 1.5 bil-
lion tons of placer gravels in the Sierra Nevada, releasing an estimated 3
million to 8 million pounds of mercury into the environment in the pro-
cess, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
All that mining waste worried those downstream in the growing farm-
ing towns at river confluences: Marysville, Colusa, Yuba City. After a few
short years of living in the valley, residents had become attuned to watching
the rivers. Valley farmers had every reason for such vigilance. In winter and
spring, the rivers often rose up to flood both homes and fields. Any fool
could see that the mining debris reduced the amount of water that rivers
and streams could carry, and pushed floods to higher levels. In some years,
so much debris came with the floods that it blanketed entire fields in a new
layer of sediment. In one instance, according to Kelley, debris covered
39,000 acres of farmland, burying orchards, gardens, and crops from sight.
In most years, however, the creep of Sierra soil down into the valley
and bay was more insidious. “The debris produced by the mines was grad-
ual in its impact, and it arrived on the flatlands anonymously, as a kind of
natural fact. No one could tell from which mine the mud was originat-
ing. . . . Litigation was difficult to conceive of. . . . Who could be sued and
for what?” writes Kelley.
Blaming the miners didn't sit well with many Californians, who viewed
them as heroes and the source of the state's wealth. Like most Americans
at the time, Californians also believed that the environment and its re-
sources were “limitless and resilient,” according to Kelley, and that it was
the inalienable right of individuals and businesses to do whatever they
pleased on their private property. In the same vein, people had few qualms
about relying on rivers and the bay to carry away whatever unwanted liq-
uids and solids humanity might produce.
