William Janklow: “You not only get more mercury but now you have destroyed the watershed. You have destroyed the things in the hills that…”

“You not only get more mercury but now you have destroyed the watershed. You have destroyed the things in the hills that contribute to clean and healthy waters running into the streams. In Lead, South Dakota, in Deadwood, the home of Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane, Deadwood, the home of the largest gold mine in the western hemisphere, the old Homestake gold mine, the community of Deadwood had the Grisly Gulch fire that burned about 12,000 acres and only by the reason of the volunteer firemen and women because the Forest Service only sent three fire trucks for a fire that was racing into the communities of Lead and Deadwood. These fires were stopped by the volunteers. Then a couple of weeks later, 2 inches of rain came one evening and a river of muck came roaring down the hills, doing millions of dollars worth of damage with this muck and ash that was 2, 3, 4 feet deep in some spots. But just as importantly, it now cleared away the hillside, so every time it rains, for dozens of years, every time it rains, you are going to have these waters racing down the hills into the valleys. But in addition to that, when you mix water with these ashes, you get lye. You get lye. When you take these little baby fish and these little fry, you kill them with lye. Lye is not good for human beings when they drink it. It is not a healthy substance. There are carcinogens in that. We have Federal laws that will put you in jail if you give cancer-causing ingredients to people.…”