More than a century of mining has left the West deeply scarred

By Robert McClure and Andrew Schneider

Electric-blue, purple and green, the water that drips from the walls and ceilings in the Richmond Mine near Redding, Calif., is so acidic that it once dissolved a steel shovel left overnight in a puddle.

If unchecked, acidic water leaching from the old mine would carry a toxic brew of heavy metals into tributaries of the Sacramento River, which provides drinking water for 80,000 people in nearby Redding.

Spills in the past have killed fish and plants for miles downstream.

"It's the world's worst water," said Charles Alpers, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist. In fact, water at the old mine has been known to catch fire. A thousand times more destructive than battery acid, it has been declared the most acidic water ever found -- literally off the charts.

The environment is so skewed inside the mine that scientists discovered a previously unseen life form, a microbe that lives in acid.

Hard-working men took a fortune from the mine over the course of a century, hacking a warren of tunnels and shafts deep into Iron Mountain to extract iron, silver, gold, copper, zinc and pyrite until digging stopped in 1963. Since then, federal taxpayers have been stuck with a $85 million cleanup tab.

The Richmond Mine is one of the scars left on the land because of the General Mining Law of 1872, which encourages miners to take precious metals from public land, paying only a token fee if they pay anything at all.

Congress created the law as a way to encourage growth and economic development in the Old West, but the toll now being paid is staggering: Some 16,000 miles of streams polluted, countless lakes and reservoirs contaminated, tens of thousands of old mine openings disgorging acidic water that can kill fish and other creatures. Some of them spew an orange-red poison called "yellow boy." The number of fish, birds and other wildlife sickened or killed is incalculable.

Nor has the damage stopped.

And what are the odds that the bushies will help solve this problem?

thanks to rebecca's pocket

Final Adjusted Total,
including first media recounts for all Florida counties:

Bush 2,915,426 --- Gore 2,915,928

thanks to rebecca's pocket