In 1848, John Marshall found a gold nugget in the tailrace of John Sutter's mill in Coloma, California. Thinking he would be an incredibly rich man, Sutter tried to keep the discovery a secret, hoping to grab the surrounding land. Unfortunately for Sutter, word got out. The gold rush was on. Within a decade, the easily found placer gold was gone, Sutter was left with nothing and gold fever drove prospectors on to the next boomtown.

During the 19th century, the U.S. Government lured settlers out west with federal land giveaways and get-rich-quick promises. Mining towns spread like wildfire, decaying as suddenly as they sprouted and leaving a mess in their wake. Today, America's gold rush is still booming. The land giveaways - and the messes left behind - continue nationwide.

Now, instead of going to a lone prospector with a mule, our land and minerals are being handed over to multinational corporations. Our public lands have been turned into toxic waste sites, and the American taxpayer is left footing the bill. This is the real legacy of mining in America: trails of subsidized environmental disasters from coast to coast, threatening the water we drink and the air we breathe.

According to the Mineral Policy Center (MPC), over half a million abandoned mines scar the nation. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) lists 66 of these reckless abandonments as Superfund sites. The price tag? Billions of dollars in clean-up costs, destroyed wildlife habitat, polluted water and air and the virtual giveaway of our mineral resources and land.

Here's how today's corporate prospector does it: Use the taxpayers' land for almost nothing, abandon the toxic remains, and let the taxpayers pay for the clean up. A 1996 report from the General Accounting Office says that mines have left 50 billion tons of waste, equivalent to 2,400 football fields each filled a mile high. These wastes contaminate the air and leak pollutants into drinking water.

Acid mine drainage, according to the United States Geological Survey, has degraded more than 8,000 miles of streams and has made some aquatic habitats "virtually lifeless." The EPA calls it the number one water-quality problem in Appalachia. When mining operations dig ore and tailings out of the earth, they react with air and water, becoming acidic. The resulting acid runoff leaches out heavy metals and contaminants, which end up in our drinking water. Appalachia's coal mining history makes it a well-known problem area, but hard rock mining out west is also causing acid mine drainage. Your tax dollars are paying for the toxic legacy of Iron Mountain in California, Bunker Hill in Idaho and the largest hazardous waste mess in the country: a 90-square-mile quartet of mining-related sites in Montana.

From the Appalachians to the Rockies and Sierras, we pay for old mining problems. And today's mining operations are creating a new legacy for our grandchildren. Cyanide heap-leaching, a newer technique, is creating some of the nastiest Superfund sites. To extract gold from low-grade ore, mining companies use cyanide sprinklers to spray piles of crushed rock, leaching out every last fleck of gold. The rock is piled on plastic liners, but they don't always work, and the cyanide flows directly into the earth. After only seven years of operation, the Summitville Mine in Colorado (now a Superfund site) was closed down due to leaking toxins. According to MPC, this site now costs the American taxpayers $30,000 a day to clean up!

Often, mining corporations dodge their cleanup responsibilities by simply declaring bankruptcy and leaving the cleanup costs to the government. In the end, the government has given away lands and resources belonging to American taxpayers, and forced them to pay the cleanup bill. The story of the gold rush is not just one of colorful prospectors and boomtown tales from the past. The real gold rush is despoiled federal lands, stolen wealth and taxpayers burdened with toxic waste dumps on what used to be pristine wildlands.

Chris Bryant was a Council intern and recently earned his Master's Degree from the University of Oregon's School of Journalism and Communication. A former geologist, Chris has professional experience in the mining industry. According to Bryant, it is imperative that we address the threats of mining operations across the globe, not just in the U.S.