The mining town of Butte was once the San Francisco of the Northwest. Cop per barons lived in luxury, and often ran the state government with bribes and under-the-table business dealings.
My, how times have changed.
In 1997, Butte is a far cry from San Francisco. All but mined-out, the Billion Dollar Rolling Hills have morphed into vast piles of slag, stretching nearly a mile high, and her open-pit mines run almost a mile deep. A century and a half of mining has turned once beautiful Butte into an eyesore. Butte is now feeling the legacy of mining - a shattered landscape of waste.
But the more things change, the more they stay the same.
A proposed gold mine near Lincoln - 140 miles down the Swan Valley - would, according to a study paid for by the Seven-Up Pete Joint Venture Mining Company, be a boon for the Lewis and Clark County economy, bringing $117 million into the economy over the 12 years the mine would operate.
I trust this study as much as I trust Philip Morris's studies claiming tobacco is not addictive.
The McDonald Gold Project, as the mine would be called, would be located at the headwaters of the Blackfoot River. This historic river used to be renowned for its pristine beauty and top-notch fly fishing. Remember "A River Runs Through It?" That was based on the Blackfoot River, slightly upstream from Missoula.
But the film wasn't even filmed near the Blackfoot. The river was too polluted.
The Blackfoot is dying, and a mine at its headwaters would seal its doom. Everyone downstream, including those in Missoula, would face the destructive pollution that a gold mine would produce.
Not possible, you say? I cite the Coeur d' Alene River, which has the misfortune of running through the mining town of Kellogg, Idaho. That body of water doesn't quite glow in the dark, but fish that show up in the creek every few years do. It feeds Coeur d' Alene Lake, which is one of the most polluted lakes in the country, even more so than Lake Erie, which caught on fire because of the goo floating around on it.
Nearby lakes are becoming polluted, too. Ashley Creek is nearly dead - Butte's citizens don't get much use out of their new lake, the Superfund site of Berkley Pit. People have to be careful on Lake Coeur d' Alene. Both of these places that are hardly a four-hour drive from here.
That is mining's legacy. If we can't learn from past mistakes, then we let the citizens of Lincoln face a serious - and preventable - environmental threat.
After all, when a river runs through it, "it" shouldn't be a toxic pollutant that kills fish, and ruins water for those downstream.
That is, and always will be, minings terrible legacy.