The Red Devil Mine, which produced mercury on and off from the 1930s to 1971, is seen from the air in 1960 in this archival photo from the University of Alaska Anchorage’s collection. The Bureau of Land Management has approved a plan to clean up what is considered the last remaining source of contamination: tailings spread over the property. (Photo by Don Grybeck/University of Alaska Anchorage Consortium Library archives and special collections)
Nearly a century after a Western Alaska mine began producing mercury, cleanup of the site is entering a final but long-term phase.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management on Wednesday issued a document known as a record of decision approving a long-term remediation plan for the Red Devil Mine , a onetime mercury producer that contaminated the Kuskokwim River region for decades.
The mine, located about 250 miles west of Anchorage and 160 miles northeast of Bethel, produced mercury from 1933 to 1946, and then sporadically between 1952 and 1971. Over the years, mine operators used tailings – the waste rock from mining operations – as fill material, and those tailings contained toxic mercury, arsenic and antimony.