When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency began its Superfund cleanup of fill dirt tainted with mercury within 50 acres of the Elem Pomo Colony, it was a welcomed project, said Jim Brown III, the tribe's administrator.
But his opinion of the $7.3 million project changed when he learned from the tribe's cultural monitors that historic artifacts were popping out of the ground as bulldozers moved and excavated the soil. Dump trucks hauled the waste to the nearby Sulfur Bank Mercury Mine - the area from which it first came.
Whoops.