EPA Offers Free Yard Soil Testing for Eligible Residents
via Alejandro Diaz, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
In 1859, miners discovered rich deposits of gold and silver known as the Comstock Lode in and around the areas of Carson City, Virginia City, Gold Hill, Silver City and Dayton, Nevada. To extract these metals, they used toxic mercury at 236 different ore-processing mills located throughout the area. Over the following decades, an estimated 14 million pounds of mercury were released into the environment, including the Carson River.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is offering eligible residents within the Carson River Mercury Superfund site boundary the opportunity to have their residential yards sampled as part of an ongoing effort to identify and clean up contamination left behind by the historic Comstock Lode mining activities.
Community outreach began in July and will continue through August, with EPA’s staff conducting door-to-door visits to answer questions, provide information and help residents enroll in the voluntary sampling program. This outreach effort is expected to reach approximately 300 households. Households that previously declined sampling will have another opportunity to enroll in the program during this final outreach.
Residential soil sampling is scheduled to begin in September 2026 and is expected to be completed by November 2026. The voluntary, no-cost program will test for mercury, lead, and arsenic – contaminants that can pose the greatest health risk to young children, especially those under the age of six, and pregnant women.
This is the final opportunity for eligible homeowners to enroll before the program phases out. EPA is flexible in providing sampling times that help meet your schedule. If elevated levels of these contaminants are detected, remediation (cleanup) will be offered at no cost to participating homeowners. The Carson River Mercury Superfund Site project is a joint collaborative effort with the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection.
Residents can visit our website at Carson River Mercury Superfund Site (tinyurl.com/carsonrivermercury)to learn more about past cleanup efforts and use the address lookup tool to determine whether their property qualifies for soil sampling. EPA Remedial Project Manager, Maria Rodriguez, can be reached at Rodriguez.Maria.D@epa.gov, (213) 244-1915, with any questions.
