Blackbird Mine Restoration - Photos

Aerial view of mine site (Newell, NOAA, 1994).	Construction of 7100 dam on Meadow Creek (Blackbird Creek) side. Dam will collect contaminated runoff in the Meadow-Blackbird creeks drainage and divert it to water treatment plant. Clean water diversion have been constructed up gradient of the dam to divert uncontaminated water. (Iadanza, NOAA, 1996)
Contaminated creek- turquoise color is copper precipitate on rocks. (Newell, NOAA, 1994)	Bucktail creek- turquoise color is copper precipitate on rocks. (Iadanza, NOAA, 1996)
Tailings on river bank (Newell, NOAA, 1994)	Degraded areas on Lemhi River to be included in cattle exclusion areas. Note broken down, eroding banks, sparse woody vegetation. (Iadanza, NOAA, 1996)
Degraded areas on Lemhi River to be included in cattle exclusion areas. (Iadanza, NOAA, 1996)	Side of mountain showing open pit mining site (Newell, NOAA, 1994)
Waste rock in Bucktail Creek drainage with partially filled Bucktail it in foreground. (Iadanza, NOAA, 1996)	Buck and pole fencing for Bing Spring Creek (Iadanza, NOAA, 1996).
Big Spring Creek historically provided habitat for anadromous fish spawning and rearing. Overgrazing by cattle has eliminated woody riparian vegetation, causing the stream to widen, lowering velocities resulting in gravels to be covered with fine sediment. Stream temperatures at the mouth during the summer are high enough to cause a thermal barrier to upstream migrating chinook. The restoration project of installing fencing on the lower two miles of stream will allow willows to re-establish, reversing the degradation. (Iadanza, NOAA, 1996)	Example of capping contaminated tailings at the West Fork tailings dam. There are 2.0 million cubic yards of highly contaminated mine tailings under the cap. Concrete channel conveying West Fork Blackbird Creek (clean) water over capped tailings pile. (Iadanza, NOAA, 1996)