On 2017-11-10, Cheri > wrote:

> Yep, definitely a problem in the Sacramento River.....

.....which empties into the SF Bay.

They later added ducks (and more), as many duck hunters hunt in the
Delta, when in season.

Amateur gold hunters still use mercury. One of the very first videos
I ran across on the web was how to use a raw potato and mercury to
amalgamate gold.

I grew up in the Sacto area, so have seen the damage gold mining
causes. Not pretty.

I even saw an old blk/wht movie about the problems created by the
infamous Malakoff Diggings:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malakoff_Diggins_State_Historic_Park>

It was a fergetable 30's oater about the ongoing war between the
Malakoff Diggings crews and farmers, downstream from the diggings, who
suffered horrible mud floods, which essentially ruined their crops and
drove them off their farms.

nb --usta play on a floating gold dredge.