Oct. 17 -- Cyprus Tohono Corp. has agreed under a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency consent order to clean up part of a mine on an Indian reservation that is contaminating Arizona groundwater.
The company will address several issues on 450 acres of its 10,500-acre property, which is on land managed by the Tohono O´odham Nation, 32 miles southwest of Casa Grande, Ariz. The area that Cyprus Tohono Corp. will clean includes three evaporation ponds, a mill tailings impoundment and a vat leach tailings embankment.
Two of the evaporation pounds and the tailings impoundment have contributed to contamination of an aquifer that was the sole source of drinking water for a nearby community, according to the EPA. The agency has found sulfate contamination at 19,400 parts per million in the area and uranium at 7.98 parts per million in the evaporation ponds.
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