In those early days, once the gold was extracted, the leftover material, called tailings, was simply dumped into nearby streams or wetlands. High levels of arsenic and mercury have been found in Gold Brook and the Upper Seal Harbour area as a result.
And it’s not just the tailings — which are now largely covered in moss and relatively stabilized — that could still contain contaminants. Old mill sites and unidentified waste rock and ore storage sites could also have leached contaminants into the bedrock. #nspoli