Mining has a conflicted history in Mason Valley. While it has provided steady work from 1915 to 1978, the land was left with an open scar after mining operations ceased--the massive Yerington pit. It's about a mile long, 800 feet deep and half full of water.
The new copper run: Yerington mining plans could bring hundreds of jobs
Yerington looks a little rough around the edges. The small city with a population of about 3,000, the Lyon County sister city to Fernley, could be the poster-child town of rural Nevada for the state's ongoing recession, considered the worst in state history.
RENO, Nev. — Lawyers for environmentalists and several Nevada tribes urged a federal judge Thursday to keep in place restrictions from a 2009 court order that blocks the expansion of a gold mine at the base of a mountain that some Western Shoshone consider sacred.
RENO, Nev. -- Neighbors of a toxic mine in northern Nevada have filed a class-action lawsuit against BP America and Atlantic Richfield Co. accusing them of intentionally and negligently concealing the extent of the contamination leaking off the abandoned site for decades.
The precious groundwater in the agricultural community of Yerington, Nevada, has been contaminated by the Anaconda Copper mine,operated for several decades until 1980, and threatens nearby residents’ well water.