Reno hearing Monday on old toxic mine at Yerington

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In this Oct. 26, 2009 file photo, irrigation ditches and crop fields located above the toxic plume of contaminated groundwater spreading from the former Anaconda copper mine site near Yearington, Nev. The mine’s neighbors didn't learn until about eight years ago that Anaconda officials had known as early as the 1970s that a toxic stew was brewing beneath the mine as a result of uranium and other chemicals leaking through leach ponds where the copper was processed. Since then, EPA has been assessing and working with the state and others to try to contain the towering waste piles, open pit lake and old leach ponds spread across an area the size of 3,000 football fields.

Scott Sady, File, Associated Press