Yuba Bear Watershed Council holds tour of Nisenan Tribute Site and Providence Mine Remediation Project

• Who: Yuba Bear Watershed Council and interested members of the public
• What: Tour of Nisenan Tribute Site and Providence Mine Remediation Project located on Deer Creek downstream of Nevada City (rain or shine)
• When: Thursday November 13, 2014 from 10:00am – 12:00pm
• Where: Meet in front of the Miner’s Foundry on Spring St. in downtown Nevada City, and walk approximately one mile to the Nisenan Bridge (there is no parking between downtown and the bridge site and no parking in the Miners Foundry parking lot.)

In celebration of the fall season the Yuba Bear Watershed Council (YBWC) are inviting the public on a tour of the Nisenan Tribute Site and Providence Mine Remediation Project located on Deer Creek downstream of Nevada City.

The tour will be on Thursday, November 13 and starts at 10:00am. Participants will meet in front of the Miners Foundry on Spring Street in downtown Nevada City.  We ask that you RSVP by emailing Andrew Collins-Anderson, YBWC Secretary. Please bring appropriate clothes and footwear and your own water. The YBWC is an open forum for the discussion of watershed wide issues and their solutions. A wide range of participants will improve the YBWC as a proactive community forum.

Tour of Nisenan Tribute Site with Shelly Covert and Izzy Martin

Nisenan descendant Shelly Covert serves as the Nevada City Rancheria Tribal Council Secretary as well as Spokesperson and Outreach Liaison for the Nisenan Tribe. She will lead a tour of the Nisenan Tribute Site which includes the new Nisenan Bridge over Deer Creek, and will then lead a tour of the Environs Trail on the south side of Deer Creek.

The Environs Trail is dedicated to the Nisenan and includes interpretive signage about the Tribe’s history and culture. Shelly will be joined by Izzy Martin, CEO of The Sierra Fund. The Sierra Fund secured the funding for the development of the Nisenan Tribute Site, and led a consortium of local organizations to see the project through to its completion.

Providence Mine Remediation Project with Kyle Leach

Kyle Leach is staff geologist at Sierra Streams Institute and project director for the Providence Mine Remediation Project. Providence Mine is an abandoned former gold mine located within the Nevada City Environs and accessible from the Environs Trail. The first phase of the cleanup of Providence Mine is nearing completion with funding from the US EPA Brownfields Program. Additional funding was recently awarded from Sierra Nevada Conservancy to complete the cleanup. Kyle will lead a tour of the site and describe the work in progress.

About the Yuba Bear Watershed Council: The Yuba Bear Watershed Council (YBWC), formerly the Yuba Watershed Council, formed in the fall of 1997 as a group of local, state, and federal agencies, conservation and environmental organizations, and neighborhood associations to discuss applying for a grant through Proposition 204, the Safe, Clean, Reliable Water Supply Act of 1996. Today, YBWC is a community forum of stakeholders (government, nonprofit, agency and business) which take the initiative to better appreciate the complex watershed relationships in the Yuba River and Bear River watersheds through informative presentations. This is accomplished by building collaborative relationships through cooperation and coordination with one another, while respecting the mission, roles, and rights of each organization and agency. SYRCL, SSI and others helped to reinitiate the Council in 2010 following a lapse in meetings.

About the Nevada City Rancheria: We, the Nisenan Indian Tribe of the Nevada City Rancheria, are the historic Tribe of Nevada County and surrounding ancestral lands. Our families have lived here for thousands of years. Prior to the Tribe’s illegal termination in 1964, the Nisenan of the Nevada City Rancheria were federally recognized and had an Indian Reservation that consisted of 75 ½ acres on Cement Hill just outside of Nevada City. Nevada City Rancheria Nisenan Tribal members today are direct, lineal descendants of these same Indigenous Nisenan families. Our families witnessed the onset of the Gold Rush, the statehood of California and the creation of Nevada County. The Tribe is proud to share its pre and post contact history with its community located in the Sierra foothills of Northern California.

The Nevada City Rancheria seeks to: Preserve the past while stabilizing the future through cultural education and preservation. We welcome questions, comments, communication and collaboration. www.nevadacityrancheria.org

About Sierra Streams Institute: Sierra Streams Institute is a watershed monitoring, research, and restoration group based in Nevada City, California, in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Our mission is to promote community stewardship and scientific knowledge of watersheds through monitoring, research, restoration, and education. Founded in 1995 as Friends of Deer Creek, SSI has grown to become an

important voice in the regional scientific community—but we are still proud to call Deer Creek our home watershed.

About the Sierra Fund: The Sierra Fund is a 501(c)3 nonprofit tax-exempt organization based in Nevada City, California. We serve the Sierra Nevada region of California, which includes 25 million acres, a third of the state’s area, and all or part of 22 rural counties.

The Sierra Fund serves two roles in the region:

• As a community foundation, we provide philanthropic services to donors and organizations in the region, and
• We identify and initiate critically needed programs in the region. Currently, our main program is our Reclaiming the Sierra Initiative, which works to address the legacy of historic mining in California.