Water Issues: Arsenic, Gold Mines, Well Water and Dry Climates
Gold Mines and Arsenic
If you're someplace mountainous with a history of gold mining, you likely have old piles of tailings laying around. These are full of arsenic and it will leach into the ground water and poison wells.
Arsenic poisoning shows up first as lesions on the feet. It's a heavy metal and gravity helps concentrate it in the lower extremities.
In such an area, everyone should get checked for arsenic poisoning. Start with folks who have feet issues and look around for someone who can treat it via chelation, which may not be a physician per se. Most physicians know nothing about chelation.
I did two college papers on arsenic in well water in Bangladesh. It's a crisis described by some sources as "bigger than Chernobyl" yet relatively few people outside of Bangladesh and the scientific community are aware of the problem.
Foreign aid organizations came in and dug wells because a quarter of a million people were getting seriously ill every single year from collecting surface waters, like rain water, and some were dying. The wells put an end to that but people didn't count that a success. Instead they were focused on the fact that the wells are poisoned.
At least some of them are.
They surveyed the wells and found that not all wells were poisoned. It was a particular layer of rock that was poisoned and wells sourcing water from that geologic formation that were poisoned.
So you can hire a geologist, hydrologist or similar qualified professional to figure out where you can put wells safely.
Find any piles of mine tailings and clean that up. It can leach poison into the ground water for many years.
Adsorption of arsenic to remove it is another option. That's not my area of expertise, but you can do your own research and find someone who knows how that works.
Subsidence
Subsidence is caused by ground water being used up faster than it can be replenished. Get the book about the history of water development in Fresno county California called Water for a Thirsty Land and/or go visit it. If you go, I suggest you walk around to see the canals and holding ponds and see if you can't talk to someone managing water there.
Fresno County has a track record of raising the water level in some years. I know of no one else doing that.
They have holding ponds to help replenish the ground water.
Read the book and figure out what is similar and what is different between their situation and yours.
Fresno County is basically a desert with one or more rivers and they built canals to supply water to the fields and in just a few years it was green and lush.
It only gets 11 inches of rain a year.
It's a modern day Hanging Gardens of Babylon and no one is talking about it. But they know how to manage water.
Dry Climates
If you are someplace with few water resources and not much precipitation, read up on Earthships.
Earthships are an off grid housing solution and they can supply a household with adequate water if you get 10 inches of rain a year. Snow inches and rain inches don't measure the same thing, but very few places get less total precipitation than that.
Southern California just south of Death Valley gets 6 inches of rain but that's really unusual. If you get 8 inches of rain plus some snow, you're probably over 10 inches equivalent.
Financing The Clean Up
If you are dealing with arsenic poisoning from gold mining tailings, you can find out what industries use arseni, then sell the tailings for the value of the arsenic.
A quick and dirty summary to get you started:
Industrial uses of arsenic include:
Alloying agent
Processing of glass
Pigments
Textiles
Paper
Metal adhesives
Wood preservatives
Ammunition
Hide tanning