Katie Walton-Day (Former Employee)

Critical minerals are essential to the Nation’s economy and security. Demand for critical minerals is increasing, and it is essential to balance the societal need for these minerals with efforts to understand the effects of mining on other natural resources and to develop techniques to minimize these effects. The USGS Minerals Resources Life Cycle Integrated Science Team (IST) focuses on the life...

The Minerals Resources Life Cycle Integrated Science Team focuses on contaminant exposures in the environment that might originate from mineral resource activities including, transportation, storage, extraction and waste management. Perceived health risks to humans and other organisms will be distinguished from actual risks, if any. If actual risks are identified the science produced by this team...

From 1986 to 2001, the Upper Arkansas Toxics Project focused on metal transport in streams affected by mining. Studies were conducted to quantify the physical, chemical, and biological processes affecting trace metal fate and transport.

On August 5, 2015, U.S. EPA was conducting an investigation of the Gold King Mine near Silverton, Colorado. While excavating as part of the investigation, water began leaking from the mine tunnel, and about three million gallons of water and sediment were released into Cement Creek, a tributary of the Animas River. The USGS provided pre- and post-release water-quality and streamflow data from...

Since 1986, the USGS Hard-Rock Mining Toxic-Substances Hydrology Project has focused on metal transport in streams affected by mining. Tracer-injection studies in St. Kevin Gulch, near Leadville, Colorado, helped the USGS design methods to characterize loading from mining activities on a watershed scale. Tracer-injection studies were done in 1995, in support of the planning needs of ederal Land...

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists developed an approach and collected baseline data to quantitatively assess offsite migration of mine-related contaminants and to identify critical contaminant exposure pathways that could result from uranium mining activities in the Grand Canyon region.

Metal loading from abandoned mines and groundwater in Leavenworth Creek causes aquatic life water-quality standards to be exceeded at the mouth of Leavenworth Creek.

Since 1986, the USGS Hard-Rock Mining Toxic-Substances Hydrology Project has focused on metal transport in streams affected by mining. Tracer-injection studies in St. Kevin Gulch, near Leadville, Colorado, helped the USGS design methods to characterize loading from mining activities on a watershed scale. Tracer-injection studies were done in 1995, in support of the planning needs of ederal Land...

The Lake Fork emerges from the outlet of Turquoise Lake at the Sugarloaf dam and flows approximately 5 miles before joining the upper Arkansas River. The first reach of the Lake Fork downstream from the dam is affected by drainage from abandoned mines in the Sugarloaf mining district. Whereas remediation of some of the mine sites has been initiated, Federal Land holders are interested in assessing...

Fluvial tailings deposits stored in the floodplain of the upper Arkansas River represent a potential nonpoint source of contamination to surface and ground waters. The U.S. Geological Survey has been cooperating with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to monitor a lowcost, insitu remediation technique for the deposits.

The USGS Abandoned Mine Lands Initiative (AMLI) is developing and demonstrating scientific knowledge and technologies that will help Federal land management agencies clean up contamination in areas near abandoned hardrock mines across the Nation. The Initiative is being conducted in two pilot watersheds, the Upper Animas River Basin in Colorado and the Boulder River watershed in Montana, where the...