On this date 131 years ago (January 7, 1884), after two years of litigation in the case of Woodruff vs. North Bloomfield Gravel Mining Company and over 2,000 witnesses with 20,000 pages of written testimony taken during the trial, Judge Lorenzo Sawyer’s decision was handed down. This decision did not stop miners from using the big water cannons but it did prohibit the discharge of debris in the Sierra Nevada regions. It imposed strict laws regarding any debris sent downstream and it did close all loop-holes. In essence the ruling stated that “all tailings must stop.” The Sawyer Decision was 225 pages long. This decision, however, did not affect the Klamath-Trinity Mountains, where hydraulic mining continued until the 1950s. Although hydraulic mining proved to be extremely profitable, it also proved to be disastrous to the environment. The waste gravel, mud, and water from the mining operations were initially dumped into Humbug Creek and later into the Yuba River. These tailings polluted the streams, killed the fish, and rendered the Sacramento and Yuba rivers un-navigable for ocean going vessels for more than one hundred years. The silt from hydraulic mining reached as far as San Francisco Bay and on through the Golden Gate. At Marysville, debris from the Malakoff mine choked the Yuba until the river bottom was higher than the adjacent town, causing severe flooding and damage. And as the bed of the Sacramento River rose, floods struck the rich agricultural areas in California’s great Central Valley, resulting in millions of dollars in damages for local farmers. The legal action of Woodruff vs. North Bloomfield Gravel Mining Company became known as the first environmental law in our country.
Posted on: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 00:50:06 +0000