I read with interest that the Forest service had closed the campground at French Meadows in the Piutes. The reason given was that tailings from mining operations in the early 1900’s and before had contaminated the ground with arsenic.

     I feel that we are being given an overload of protection. In the last 100 years how many people have suffered from anything worse than a mosquito bite by using that campground? Very few I’ll warrant. How would you go about getting contaminated up there. There is no potable water supply, and surely walking on the forest floor is safe enough. A person would probably have to deliberately swallow mouthfuls of contaminated earth to ingest enough arsenic to poison himself.

    A small herd of beef cattle graze that area. Have they accumulated an access of arsenic in their flesh to harm those of us who eat steak?       I have visited the area many times in the last several years and the only health hazard I ever found was a pit toilet that appeared to have been last emptied about the same the time the mines were in operation.

 

 

Eric Robinson

Weldon