The Environmental Protection Agency has initiated extensive soil testing in Dewey-Humboldt. The focus is on more than 3,000 properties potentially contaminated with arsenic, lead, and other hazardous materials from the former Iron King Mine and Humboldt Smelter. Both have been designated superfund sites dur to their environmental impact and health risks from metal exposure.
So far, the EPA has sampled 86 properties and hopes to create tailored cleanup plans for those properties with elevated metals.