California Environmental Legacies

This week’s lecture was titled “California Mining and Environmental Legacies” and it was lectured by Peggy O’Day, who is an environmental geochemist that specializes the use of spectroscopic and microscopic methods. The main argument of this week’s lecture is that gold was prominent and it brought much to California, however, it left behind last longing consequences of the discovery of gold, especially water. The lecture begins with the history of how gold possibly have formed in the Sierra Nevada. At the same time, gold had to go through a process before gold formed at the surface that was visible. The California gold rush began in 1849, which lead to rights and laws about mining. With mining becoming a prominent activity, a law called General Mining Law of 1872. It allowed any U.S. citizen to stake a claim on land that is open to mining. …show more content…
This method involved the use of water at great amounts, however, it left lasting consequences that is still seen today. The use of water for hydraulic mining would leave a great amount of mercury in the water. At the same time, the companies were unable to control run-offs from the mining. Eventually, it leads to an increase of gravel and mercury in the water that goes down stream. It caused issues for the community because the water affected people’s daily use of the water. Even the fishes were affected by the contaminated water. This relates to the article Assessing California as it also discusses the California Gold Rush. It discusses the use of hydraulic mining to find the gold that was still deep in the ground. The method use water to remove the gravel from the gold. From this method, it reform the way the Sierra Nevada looks and changed the way we see it