INDECLINE’s new installation, “Death Metals”, is an environmental art-project in protest of man’s constant quest for wealth at the expense of everything else. The project was carried out covertly over the course of six days by eight members of the collective. The artwork left behind was created using plasma cutters, angle grinders, and various other power tools along with Sugar Artists’ Acrylic.
Located 20 miles from Nipton, California on the eastern edge of the Ivanpah Valley, rest the toxic remains of “GolDome”, an abandoned, 40-acre, gold-processing mill. Owned and operated by the Vanderbilt Corporation into the 1980’s, the facility was active until 1994, when the implementation of the California Desert Protection Act suspended mining activity and transformed the East Mojave Scenic Area to into the newly protected Mojave National Preserve. In 2002, the EPA listed GolDome as a “Superfund Site”.
Here are a number of the violations discovered at the site:
– Mineral oil potentially containing PCB’s
– Numerous 55 gallon drums of waste oily-liquids
– Various drum storage areas with unlabeled drums containing unknown contents
– Leaking drums with soil contaminated by oily liquid beneath
– (2) open drums containing sodium cyanide
– Several settling pond/leach field areas with soil discoloration indicating possible heavy metal contamination
– Numerous lab-size amber bottles containing cyanide
– An open burn-area with unknown contaminants
– Drums of sodium-cyanide, sodium-hydroxide, “hydrochlorite” and other unknown contents in drums stored onsite in a manner not conducive to preventing the unknowing or unauthorized entry of persons, livestock, or wildlife
A $264,000 “short-term” clean up was executed to eliminate the “serious threats”, but, to this day, uncontrolled and hazardous substances continue to pollute the area. It is unlikely they will ever be properly eliminated.
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