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WASHINGTON—An audit says the government has endangered the public’s health and safety by failing to clean up abandoned mines on federal land in the West.
Dangerous levels of arsenic, lead and mercury, along with gaping cavities, were found at dilapidated hard-rock mining sites easily accessible to visitors and residents.
The report released Friday by the Interior Department’s inspector general says that Bureau of Land Management supervisors told staff to ignore the problems.
It says employees who tried to report contaminated sites were threatened with retaliation.
