After decades of leaching mercury into the streams and rivers of Lane County, the EPA has put the former Black Butte Mine on the Superfund clean up list.
The mine is located about ten miles south of Cottage Grove. EPA has documents thousands of cubic yards of tailings and soil that’s been contaminated by mercury and arsenic. Some of it has been carried by streams and rivers into the Cottage Grove reservoir where things have gotten so bad that health officials say it’s a good idea not to each the fish there.
