18 Mines That Threaten Cascadia S Rivers Page 10

Where Mines Have Polluted in the Past, and What They Can Do to Our Future Page 9, Special Two-Page Map: 18 Mines That Threaten Cascadia s Rivers Page 10 Con&.-~--111111111111111~~111111111111111~--~- Dear Reader our years ago, the owner of a gold mine at Summitville, Colo., declared bankruptcy and walked away. . He left behind a toxic mess that will cost tax• Fpayers $150 million to clean up. Seventeen miles of river have been ren• dered lifeless by acidic water, heavy met• als and cyanide that poured from the mine. The mine industry says the disas- EDITORIAL

ter at Summitville was an aberration. But a close look taken this issue by Cascadia Times reveals that Summitville is far more typical than the industry will admit. This matters to us in Cascadia because the mining industry is digging in new places for gold, silver and other trea• sures in our region. Most often, these new mines are being built next co rivers that support recreation, rourism and agri• culture, as well as aquatic life. The con• flicts between mining and other river uses are being addressed poorly if at all by companies. FIELD NOTES: Urban streams top B.C's list of REALITY CH ECK: 16 Consider, for example, Montana's endangered rivers: citizen suits expand reach of Blackfoot River. Phelps Dodge Corp., the POINT OF VIEW: When the Forest Service Clean Water Act 3 majority partner in a proposed mine next breaks the law: by Natalie Shapiro 16 to the Blackfoot, promises to make sure GROUND TRUTHING: Denial on the Tongass. by the river will not be harmed by cyanide MAIL: 17 mining operations. In particular, the cor• Kathie Durbin 3 poration says the mine will not produce BOOK REVIEW: The Case Against the Global acid mine drainage - a toxic effluent con• CAPITOL BUZZ: Salmon. the political animal: .. 6 Economy. reviewed by Patrick Mazza: 18 sidered the most serious environmental effect of hard rock mining. BOOK EXCERPT: The life of a daily newspaper. COVER PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARK A. WILSON, TOP, Mining companies always promise a from Stuff. by John C. Ryan and Alan Thein clean operation. In truth, according to the ZORTMAN-LANDUSKY MINE; JOHN SMART, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Durning. Northwest Environment Watch: 14 BOTTOM, BLACKFOOT RIVER predicting acid mine drainage "is current• ly difficult, costly and of questionable CASCADIA RESOURCE GUIDE: 15 reliability." Phelps Dodge refuses to release to the public its field data that purportedly Editor/Publisher Paul Koberstein proves acid mine drainage is no threat. If Operations Manager/Publisher Robin Klein the company is wrong, a world class trout stream will be converted into just one Art Director Bryan Potter CASCADUI more Superfund site. The mining indus• Contributing Editors Kathie Durbin.]o Ostgarden 'IIMES try is already responsible for more than SQ0,000 abandoned, polluting mines that How to Reach Us will cost $70 billion to clean up. The only BOABD OF ADDISOBS Phone (503) 223-9036 Fax (503) 736-0097 way to avoid adding the Blackfoot to this Susan Alexander. San Francisco, Calif. Email [email protected] list is to stop this mine. World Wide Web http://cascadia.times.org Cascadia Times would like to thank Peter Bahouth, Atlanta, Ga. Mail 25-6 NW 23rd Place, No. 406, Portland OR 97210 Pamela Brown. Portland, Ore. the Northwest Fund for the Environment, the Bullitt Foundation, the Lazar Ellen Chu. Seattle, Wash. Cascadia Times is published I O times a year by - Foundation, Molly O'Reilly, Dr. John David James Duncan. Lolo, Mont. Osborn, Don and Sharon Genasci and our Pat Ford. Boise, Idaho Cascadia Times Publishing Co., 25-6 Northwest many subscribers for their support. Michael Fro me. Bellingham, Wash. 23rd Place, No. 406, Portland OR 97210-3534. Subscriptions are $20 per year; $36 for two years. Ian Gill. Vancouver, B.C. The entire contents of Cascadia Times are copyright Peter Lavigne. Portland, Ore. © 1996 by the Cascadia Times Publishing Co., and James Karr. Seattle, Wash. may not be reproduced in whole or in part with• Ken Margolis. Kitamaat Village, B.C. out permission of the publisher. The publisher Marshall Mayer. Helena, Mont. encourages unsolicited manuscripts and art, but Christopher Peters, Arcata, Calif. cannot be held responsible for them. Manuscripts Catherine Stewart. Vancouver, B.C. or material unaccompanied by a self-addressed Randy Showstack. Washington, D.C. stamped envelope will not be returned. Cascadia Jim Stratton. Anchorage, Alaska Times encourages electronic submissions to e-mail (J) c Sylvia Ward. Fairbanks.Alaska :::J box [email protected]. We reserve the right to Charles Wilkinson. Boulder, Colo. print letters in condensed form. A Mary Wood. Eugene, Ore. WL------~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Field from Cascadia Urban Streams Top B.C.'s List of Endangered Rivers

By Paul Koberstein

rban development, grazing and logging seriously threaten the U health of British Columbia's urban rivers, as well as the health of residents themselves. For this reason, the Outdoor Recreation Council of B.C. made the unusual selection of "urban streams" as the province's most endangered river. . Last summer, the questionable quality of some of B.C. 's drinking water supplies made headlines when morb than 10,000 residents of Kelowna and Cranbrook, B.C., suffered an out• B.C.'s second most endangered river. the Taku. has been damaged by acid mine drainage from an old mine site. Now the break of potentially fatal gastrointesti• old mine may be reopened. For more on the Taku. see page 13. nal illness caused by the parasite cryp• is concerned with the effects of urban North America. The wilderness is hydrological cycle, impacting migrat• tosporidium. This is the same organism development on salmon habitat. It threatened by a proposal to build a 160 ing salmon. that made 400,000 residents of notes that 142 salmon runs are extinct km (100 mile) road to reopen the • Horsefly River (Quesnel water• Milwaukee, Wis., sick in 1993. Nor was and several hundred more are in dan• Tulsequa Chief gold mine (see page 13). shed). Home of B.C.'s most valuable it cryptosporidium's first appearance in ger of becoming extinct. The majority salmon runs, it is located to the east of the province. The Greater Vancouver of the extinct runs are in rivers and The rest of the list includes: Williams Lake. The level of logging Regional District discovered trace streams that empty into the Georgia has increased in the past few years, amounts of it in drinking water reser• Strait from both the Lower Mainland • The Owikeno System. A long with impacts on salmon spawning and voirs in 1991. Experts speculate that and eastern Vancouver Island. narrow lake, the Owikeno empties into rearing habitat. cattle might have been the source in The second most endangered in the head of Rivers Inlet on B.C. 's cen• • The Englishman River. Located B.C. B.C. is the Taku River, the largest wild tral coast. Extensive logging in the on eastern Vancouver Island, the The Outdoor Recreation Council river watershed on the western shore of headwaters had led to changes in the FIELD NOTES CONTINUED ON PAGE 4 GROUND Denial on the Tongass TRUTH ING By Kathie Durbin

KETCHIKAN, Alaska -- o one in this community of 14,000 celebrated in Alaska, KPC will have to bid for timber at auction and pay market value for logs, just March -- at least not openly -- when Ketchikan Pulp Co. shut down production for like any other federal purchaser. If it leaves, the last major market for Tongass timber good at its polluting 43-year-old pulp mill. Though Alaska environmentalists had spent will go with it, leaving only a scattering of small sawmills to take up the slack. more than a decade fighting for termination of the mill's SO-year contract to log timber Days before the Tongass plan was released, L-P floated the idea of building a from the Tongass National Forest, they chose veneer mill in Ketchikan that would consume 100 million board feet annually. But COMMENTARY not to gloat over a corporate decision that will skeptics say that plan makes no sense, given the downturn in the plywood industry cost 400 good-paying jobs. and the high cost of milling veneer in Southeast Alaska: In time, someone may build a Besides, as it turned out, declaring fiberboard plant to make use of-timber not suit• victory in the fight for the Tongass would able for saw lumber. In time, secondary wood• have been premature. The pulp mills may processing facilities may materialize to manufac• be gone, but the Forest Service bureaucra- Amazingly. the Forest Service shows no sign of under• ture doors, windows and furniture from Tongass cy that fed them lives on. tree. But right now, as Forest Service economists With the closure of the Alaska Pulp David J. Brooks and Richard Haynes point out in Corporation mill in Sitka three yearsago, standing that the- market for Tongass timber has been a new demand analysis, "these are no more than and the shutdown of the Ketchikan mill proposals." this year, the Forest Service had an oppor• Brooks and Haynes developed three scenar• tunity to downsize the Tongass timber sale downsized drastically. The agency is pushing ahead ios for predicting timber demand. They admit program painlessly. The long-delayed that all three make optimistic assumptions about Tongass Land Management Plan was the with several new large-scale timber sale projects.- the health of the Japanese economy (Japan is the perfect vehicle for ushering in a new era of major purchaser of Alaskan wood products) and sustainable forestry in Southeast Alaska. the competitiveness of Alaska lumber on domes• Instead, the plan the Forest Service adopted in May sets a maximum annual timber tic and world markets. Under the "medium" scenario, demand will climb slowly from sale target of 267 million board feet -- double to quadmple the demand the agency's 101 million board feet next year to 135 million board feet by 2008. Under the "low" own economists predict will exist for Tongass trees between now and the year 2010. scenario, demand will hover at 65 million to 72 million board feet -- about a quarter as Who will buy all this timber? No one knows. much as the Tongass hopes to sell. Under a settlement the Clinton administration reached with Louisiana-Pacific The plain fact is that without the huge subsidies the pulp mills enjoyed, there is Corp., Ketchikan Pulp's parent company, KPC will be allowed to log 300 million board little market for Tongass timber. Yet even before the plan was released, the agency was feet of timber it has bought already -- enough to keep its two sawmills running for pushing ahead with new large-scale timber sale projects that will require punching

three years. After that, if L-P wants to stay in c ONT IN u E O ON p AGE 4 L-~~~~~~~~-=;..._ ..;:;;..;...... ;..:..:_~----..:.-~~~~~~~~.;._~~~~~~~-----'c, CONTINUED FROM PAGE 3 Englishman has suffered from altered Canada-U.S. border. Another concern flows and diminished water quality is effects stemming from a 30-ton spill due to development, industrial activity of molten slag last May. • and extensive logging. Fish stocks have declined drastically in the last five years. Citizen Suits • The Stikine/lskut River. Recognized for its wild and scenic, his• torical and cultural, and recreation val• Expand Reach of ues, this system is on B.C.'s north coast. A major threat is increased log• Clean Water Act ging in the Cassiar Forest District, a northern boreal forest that scientists by Kathie Durbin warn may not be able to recover from extensive clear-cutting. B.C. Hydro is awsuits filed in Oregon, considering a dam in the Grand Washington and Idaho under Canyon of the Stikine, Canada's L the federal Clean Water Act may longest, deepest canyon. greatly expand protection for streams • The Fraser River. For the past and fish by forcing state environmental two years, the Fraser had been the agencies finally to address water degra• province's most endangered. The .dation caused by grazing, farming and ... _... Fraser, which cuts through the heart of irrigation withdrawals. --..-: .. i- /0 ,,, ~ B.C., drains almost a quarter of the The latest legal victory for envi• ~ -,_., .. province. It has benefited from ronmentalists occurred in Washington, _...,·.....,-- where in April the EPA approved a list Pollution in Portland's Columbia Slough prompted the city to erect warni- ng signs. improved sewage treatment in the Lower Mainland, a basin-wide land• of 666 polluted rivers, streams and management plan and a more conserv• lakes submitted by the Washington ing of all water withdrawals in streams In its first 20 years, enforcement of ative approach to managing fisheries. Department of Ecology. The vastly with struggling salmon runs, but the 1972 Clean Water Act focused • The Nechako River. The expanded list, prepared under a court Ransel contends the state has not fol• mainly on reducing so-called "point Nechako drains into the Fraser suffers order, includes. 48 streams that no lowed it, and has also encouraged ille• sources" of water pollution such as fac• from low flows. Its water is diverted to longer support salmon runs because of gal water withdrawals by failing to tory discharge pipes and sewage treat• the Kemano River to generate electric• low water flows. Those streams are in enforce water use laws on the books. ment plants. By most accounts, pollu• ity for a smelter at Kitimat. Low flows the Nooksack, Puyallup-White, The federal courts recognized tion from industrial and municipal pose risks to salmon. Deschutes, Skokomish, Quilcene, depleted flow as a clean-water issue in sources has declined dramatically as a • Finlay River. Though the lower Dungeness, Klickitat, Walla Walla, 1994, when the U.S. Supreme Court result. But the act also requires states reaches have been drowned behind Yakima, Wenatchee, Entiat, Methow ruled in a Washington case that the to address "non-point sources" of pol• the W.A.C. Bennet Dam, the upper and Okanogan basins. state acted properly under the Clean lution such as logging, road-building, Finlay is still very much a wilderness. The listing is the first step in Water Act by imposing minimum flow farming and urban runoff - a much This remote watershed is important to restoring salmon to those waters, said standards at a hydroelectric plant to more complicated task. Since the early tourism and guide outfitting indus• Katherine Ransel of the environmental protect salmon. The precedent-setting 1990s environmentalists in tries. Extensive logging and· the group American Rivers. "These ruling stated, in effect, that failure to Washington, Oregon, Idaho and 23 oth• Kemess Mine pose concerns. streams should be closed to new water provide sufficient water in salmon er states have gone to court to enforce • Columbia River. Inadequate rights, and the state should immediate• streams violates the act, which is sup• this broader application of the act. water releases from B.C. Hydro Dams ly begin monitoring water use," Ransel posed to protect the "beneficial uses" In the Northwest, lawsuits have threaten fisheries upstream from the said. A 1993 state law requires meter- of water for fish. focused on streams with elevated tern-

Ground Truthing continued from page 3 hunting on Prince of Wales Island be closed issues heated up when groups outside buy it, we'll get a purchaser from the Lower roads into pristine Alaska rainforest on to Ketchikan residents this summer. Alaska petitioned the U.S. Fish and 48." North Prince of Wales Island, North Port Houghton, for which another huge Wildlife Service to list the Queen Charlotte But critics say the Tongass National. Baranof Island, Kupreanof Island and the project is named, is a broad inlet leading to goshawk and the Alexander Archipelago Forest doesn't know what to do if it's not mainland near Petersburg. a salt water river known as a salt chuck, wolf under the Endangered Species Act. punching roads and clearcuts into virgin Environmentalists, commercial fishermen which winds deeply into the mainland, fill• The agency found that both species were rainforest. "(T)he Forest Service is scared to and even a Forest Service employee have ing at high tide and supporting rich popula• imperiled by diminishing habitat, but under death of acknowledging the new economic appealed these projects, to no avail. tions of salmon, halibut and shellfish. The intense political pressure decided to forgo realities of southeast Alaska," Andy Stahl of The Lab Bay sale on North Prince of Forest Service has proposed to carve the listings after Tongass officials promised to Forest Service Employees for Wales is a ·case in point. It would build 30 untouched rainforest here with 89 miles of protect more wildlife habitat in their new Environmental Ethics wrote to Katie miles of logging roads and clearcut 44.2 mil• new road and 93 clearcut units covering plan. McGincy, the Clinton administration's top lion board feet of timber in an area under• 6,037 acres, all to produce 121.5 million Last year a federal judge struck down environmental official, in April. With release lain with extensive karst soils and world• board feet of timber. Only one small mill that finding. The Fish and Wildlife Service of the new Tongass Land Management class caves. operates in Petersburg, the only town of any is now under a federal court order to recon• Plan, it appears the agency has moved into Skilled recreational cavers brought the size nearby. sider and announce its new decision this a self-preservation mode. fragile caves to the attention of the Forest Forest Service planner Michael spring. The Clinton administration, which It will fall to the Clinton administration Service in the late 1980s, forcing the agency Condon says the sale was changed to pro• doesn't want to referee an endangered to make the final call on the Tongass. To his to develop a cave management plan. tect views and shoreline along the salt species donnybrook in Southeast Alaska, credit, the president has stood firm until Timber from the Lab Bay sales was chuck and Stephens Passage, where the pulled back the Tongass plan for further now, vetoing a draft of bills designed to Ml :&! originally slated to go to Ketchikan Pulp, cruise ships pass. But he concedes logging review. As a result, the final plan does undo the Tongass reforms Congress passed .,: but when the pulp mill closed the agency will occur in the headwater areas of many include additional protection for wildlife: in 1990, and refusing to consider an exten• c earmarked the sales for independent pur• salmon streams. The agency's own draft 1.1 million acres of habitat in reserves dis• sion of the Ketchikan mill's contract. But chasers. However, critics say the sales con• environmental impact statement on the sale tributed across the forest. Yet it also calls for that courage will all be for naught if Clinton e= u tain too much volume for most small opera- predicts road-building will affect salmon logging 6, 700 acres of the most biologically now stands by as the Forest Service contin• :! tors to bid on and are too distant from small populations in both fresh and salt water. productive old-growth rainforest annually, ues to destroy the most biologically produc• ~ mills to be logged profitably. The Forest Service had reason to on average, for the next 100 years. Brad tive temperate rainforest in the world -• r-, 0' Hunters on Prince of Wales Island fear reduce logging even before the Ketchikan Powell, supervisor of the Ketchikan area of without even a buyer for the trees. c- the impact of more roads and clearcuts on pulp mill closed. In 1992, a team of scien• the Tongass, believes markets for this tim• ~ diminishing populations of Sitka black- tists warned that nine species, including ber will materialize. "If we were to put up ::, tailed deer. Concerns about declining deer bear, wolf and goshawk, were in danger of 500, 400 or 100 million board feet, it will numbers came to a head this spring when a disappearing from the Tongass over time sell," he said in March. "If we put up a tim• 0 subsistence council recommended that deer unless the rate of logging dropped. Habitat ber sale and a local entrepreneur doesn't CONTINUED FROM PAGE 3 Englishman has suffered from altered Canada-U.S. border. Another concern flows and diminished water quality is effects stemming from a 30-ton spill due to development, industrial activity of molten slag last May. • and extensive logging. Fish stocks have declined drastically in the last five years. Citizen Suits • The Stikine/lskut River. Recognized for its wild and scenic, his• torical and cultural, and recreation val• Expand Reach of ues, this system is on B.C.'s north coast. A major threat is increased log• Clean Water Act ging in the Cassiar Forest District, a northern boreal forest that scientists by Kathie Durbin warn may not be able to recover from extensive clear-cutting. B.C. Hydro is awsuits filed in Oregon, considering a dam in the Grand Washington and Idaho under Canyon of the Stikine, Canada's L the federal Clean Water Act may longest, deepest canyon. greatly expand protection for streams • The Fraser River. For the past and fish by forcing state environmental two years, the Fraser had been the agencies finally to address water degra• province's most endangered. The .dation caused by grazing, farming and ... _... Fraser, which cuts through the heart of irrigation withdrawals. --..-: .. i- /0 ,,, ~ B.C., drains almost a quarter of the The latest legal victory for envi• ~ -,_., .. province. It has benefited from ronmentalists occurred in Washington, _...,·.....,-- where in April the EPA approved a list Pollution in Portland's Columbia Slough prompted the city to erect warni- ng signs. improved sewage treatment in the Lower Mainland, a basin-wide land• of 666 polluted rivers, streams and management plan and a more conserv• lakes submitted by the Washington ing of all water withdrawals in streams In its first 20 years, enforcement of ative approach to managing fisheries. Department of Ecology. The vastly with struggling salmon runs, but the 1972 Clean Water Act focused • The Nechako River. The expanded list, prepared under a court Ransel contends the state has not fol• mainly on reducing so-called "point Nechako drains into the Fraser suffers order, includes. 48 streams that no lowed it, and has also encouraged ille• sources" of water pollution such as fac• from low flows. Its water is diverted to longer support salmon runs because of gal water withdrawals by failing to tory discharge pipes and sewage treat• the Kemano River to generate electric• low water flows. Those streams are in enforce water use laws on the books. ment plants. By most accounts, pollu• ity for a smelter at Kitimat. Low flows the Nooksack, Puyallup-White, The federal courts recognized tion from industrial and municipal pose risks to salmon. Deschutes, Skokomish, Quilcene, depleted flow as a clean-water issue in sources has declined dramatically as a • Finlay River. Though the lower Dungeness, Klickitat, Walla Walla, 1994, when the U.S. Supreme Court result. But the act also requires states reaches have been drowned behind Yakima, Wenatchee, Entiat, Methow ruled in a Washington case that the to address "non-point sources" of pol• the W.A.C. Bennet Dam, the upper and Okanogan basins. state acted properly under the Clean lution such as logging, road-building, Finlay is still very much a wilderness. The listing is the first step in Water Act by imposing minimum flow farming and urban runoff - a much This remote watershed is important to restoring salmon to those waters, said standards at a hydroelectric plant to more complicated task. Since the early tourism and guide outfitting indus• Katherine Ransel of the environmental protect salmon. The precedent-setting 1990s environmentalists in tries. Extensive logging and· the group American Rivers. "These ruling stated, in effect, that failure to Washington, Oregon, Idaho and 23 oth• Kemess Mine pose concerns. streams should be closed to new water provide sufficient water in salmon er states have gone to court to enforce • Columbia River. Inadequate rights, and the state should immediate• streams violates the act, which is sup• this broader application of the act. water releases from B.C. Hydro Dams ly begin monitoring water use," Ransel posed to protect the "beneficial uses" In the Northwest, lawsuits have threaten fisheries upstream from the said. A 1993 state law requires meter- of water for fish. focused on streams with elevated tern-

The river was cut Fork, Virginia City and Bannack arose fight the Seven-Up Pete Joint Venture, a from the glimmering gravels. Now partnership of majority owner Phelps N comes Phelps Dodge Corp. of Phoenix, Dodge and Canyon Resources Inc. And Arizona, with plans to extract almost 4 the people at Seven-Up Pete are fight• by the world's great million ounces of gold buried under ing back. In April, the joint venture sued McDonald Meadows. To get at it, they the Clark Fork Coalition for $20,500 in ' will have to dig easily the biggest gold legal fees it claims to have incurred as an - IOILSlOCKl'IIU Otlli. .2s-. .,Omi 1.0-. mine in Montana and one of the largest intervenor in a preliminary battle, with flood and runs in North America. the big contests yet to come. Despite its seeming richness, the The coalition's target, however, isn't The McDonald Meadows cyanide gold mine would be built next to the Blackfoot River. (Source, Seven-Up Pete Joint Venture) ore at McDonald Meadows is actually of the Seven-Up Pete Joint Venture so extremely low grade. Until the U.S. much as the five-member body known over rocks from the Bureau of Mines introduced "cyanide as the State Land Board, which has final hen Phelps Dodge formally even though the owner, Hecla Inc., had heap-leach mining" technology in the say on the mine because of its location announced its plans for the promised to operate for 10 years. Now 1960s, the industry passed over such on state-owned land. If the mine had WBlackfoot in 1994, it made two the town must deal with the newly marginal gold deposits. Today cyanide been located instead on federal land, promises to the people of Montana. The unemployed. In the 1980s, another basement of time. operations pockmark the globe, largely the weak 1872 Mining Law would company said the mine would not cont• mine near Challis promised 500 jobs, in desert regions such as in Nevada, apply. And indeed there are two promis• aminate the river, and that it would gen• but now employs less than 200. It California and the Rockies, and in ing Phelps Dodge gold claims near erate $117 million in taxes and royalties closed for three years in the early '90s. almost every case with serious environ• McDonald Meadows. One is on federal over its 12-year lifespan for the state. As a result, the town built a school that's On some of the mental consequences. In the early land, and the 1872 law could all but Michael Shern, the mine's project man• never seen a student, and constructed 1990s, mining companies began propos• assure its development. ager, wrote in the Helena Independent housing that eventually had to be ing enormous new mines in the rainy The State Land Board is headed by Record that the mine "will produce hauled off to Oregon. Northwest corner of the continent, Montana's popular Gov. Marc Racicot, a hundreds of jobs, will be making signifi• Two Idaho gold mines and a third rocks are timeless where conflicts with rivers are perhaps Republican, and includes four other cant contributions to maintain and that unearths the element molybdenum even more worrisome (see page 9). elected officials. The politics favor improve our state's educational systems. threaten to discharge acidic metals into Cyanide is deadly to all life, and Phelps Dodge: Mining companies have We will do all of this while respecting the nearby Salmon River, the home of miners attempt to contain it using plas• run Montana since statehood in 1892 - and improving the environment." Idaho's endangered salmon runs. "Don't raindrops. Under tic liners. Unfortunately, EPA has found an assertion the governor himself makes Bill Snoddy, a spokesman for the let cyanide mining come into your all liners leak. Mines also poison water in a lawsuit against the successor of a joint venture, said, "I can't think of a state," warns Lynne Stone of the bodies with acidic concoctions of heavy mining company that began spoiling the single business in the Lincoln area that Boulder-White Clouds Council in metals and silt. This chronic seepage, landscape around Butte 100 years ago. will be negatively impacted by the Ketchum, Idaho, not far from two huge the rocks are the known as "acid mine drainage," occurs Montana politics don't look much differ• mine's presence. As for the Blackfoot cyanide gold mines. "Mining really is when sulfide-bearing minerals in rock ent at this end of the century. The River, the water is still going to flow, it's the worst abuser of the land. You think are exposed to air and water, yielding Montana Legislature in 1995 and 1997 going to be unaltered and unchanged. you've found the place you've always sulfuric acid. This acid dissolves heavy weakened state water quality laws, as if It's going to be just as good quality as it wanted, and here comes the mining cor• words, and some of metals capable of destroying aquatic life following instructions from Phelps is today." poration and they blow the hell out of By Paul Koberstein and habitat. The EPA says predicting Dodge's corporate boardroom. The The economy is not the only issue the valley." acid mine drainage is "difficult, costly Legislature weakened standards for with resonance in the Blackfoot Valley, Seven-Up Pete's economic study and of questionable reliability." If acid arsenic, a carcinogen found in waters where the unemployment rate is low made no mention of impacts on agricul• the words are develops at McDonald Meadows, it beneath McDonald Meadows, by a and urban sprawl is becoming an annoy• ture and tourism, two of Montana's could pour a deadly brew of lead, mer• thousand times. It also allowed mines to ance to residents. Thomas Power, head largest industries. Nor did it provide an The ~Ion~ over Norman Maclean's River cury, arsenic, zinc and cadmium into the pump groundwater from open pits of the economics department at the analysis of what happens to the econo• Blackfoot. directly into a river. Phelps Dodge ben• University of Montana in Missoula, says my after the mine shuts down. GO..... theirs. I am haunt- . LINCOLN, Montana - Montana's Blackfoot River meanders westward from the Continental Divide, through The U.S. Geological Survey says efits directly from both measures. mines can do more harm to a communi• However, another study produced by :E a wide sweep of verdant meadow and ranchland, toward the Clark Fork River and Missoula. It's eerie to drive acid mine drainage can limit recreation• Phelps Dodge is also adept at run• ty than good: "It's hard to find a pros• ECO-Northwest, an economic consult• .:: through the heart of this valley, to Lincoln, where the Unabomber allegedly hid out. But that's not the half of it. ning a political campaign, if it serves its ing firm in Eugene, Ore., concluded c al, industrial and municipal use of rivers perous mining town. There ain't such a i:ii On two knobby buttes known as McDonald Meadows, in view from the site of Ted Kaczyinski's dissembled many miles downstream from mining. interests. Last November a clean water thing, despite the fact that mining jobs that the long-term effects of cyanide c u pipe-bomb factory, a mining company has discovered gold. The company proposes to blast out a 440 acre open pit The Blackfoot is one of the most heavi• initiative in Montana would have are the highest paying blue-collar jobs mining would "disrupt and jeopardize GO ed by the waters." c and spread the ore over an area the size of Manhattan's Central Park. The hole could comfortably hold two Space ly used rivers in Montana, and supports required new mines to treat waste water you can get." the strong, more enduring economic c.:» Needles_. Showers of cyanide would separate out the gold. Nearby, on the Blackfoot's alluvial plain, the company wild, naturally reproducing populations before dumping it into surface or Indeed, miners can make $40,000- development the area is enjoying." r-, would pile enough waste rock to fill 100 Kingdomes, casting a shadow over Norman Maclean's beloved trout of two fish species in danger of extinc• groundwater sources. The measure orig• Gary Aitken, a landowner in the a-- $60,000 a year. However, as Power says, c a-- stream. nearby Ovando area, wrote to the local ::, tion, westslope cutthroat trout and bull inally enjoyed overwhelming popular the paychecks end when the mine clos• (1) Q) c - from "A River Runs Through It" Would the river notice? A clearcut forest grows back, but a mine pollutes forever. In the U.S., mines have trout, among other fish. support, but Phelps Dodge and its es, which they always do. And some• newspaper, "Heap leach gold mining ..2, killed 12,000 miles of river, more than the total protected as wild and scenic rivers. These potential impacts have not cronies in the mining industry trashed it times they quit prematurely, such as a has put outfitters out of business, it has . The Montana Mining Association produces bumper stickers that say, "If something can't be grown, it has to be by Norman Maclean escaped the notice of the Missoula• with a $2.5 million advertising cam• gold mine that opened four years ago caused agricultural users large added mined." Supporters of this project miners say if we can't put miners to work in Montana - the "Treasure State" - based Clark Fork-Pend Oreille paign, and won the election by 12 per• near Challis, Idaho. Recently it shut 0 CONTINUED ON PAGE 8 where can they possibly go? Mining got its start in Montana in 1858, and towns such as Butte, Helena, American Coalition, which has gone to court to centage points. down, throwing hundreds out of work, 0 Special Report c o N t I N u E o

operational costs, it has turned prosper• ing towns into decaying backwaters." On paper, it's clear why Phelps Acrn Mine Drainage Process Dodge might be anxious to develop this mine. The company won't disclose its profit margins, but other multinationals report that cyanide heap-leach mining can yield an ounce of gold for as little as $170. The market price of gold these days is about $350 an ounce, and last year reached $400. But in the words of Meg Nelson, director of the Clark Fork Coalition, no matter the price, the Blackfoot River is more precious than gold. Other than its value as an invest• ment, gold is of modest practical use to industry. It is used, for example, in the manufacture of computer components The acid mine drainage process starts when sulfuric acid forms when sulfide combines and CDs. Indeed, about 84 percent of with oxygen and water. The sulfuric acid leaches heavy metals such as cadmium. mercury and arsenic out of the rocks. When the toxic mixture reaches streams. it can kill aquatic the gold mined worldwide becomes life. (Courtesy Environmental Mining Council of British Columbia) jewelry. There is, in fact, no gold short• age. There is, however, a shortage of rivers of comparable beauty and benefit as the Blackfoot. Vancouver, B.C., who declared bank• piece in the New York Times. "It is a in one instance, an ominous indicator of ruptcy on Dec. 3, 1992 and walked clear-cut insane risk for the benefit of a potential disasters ahead. helps Dodge promises to use away. A Friedland-controlled company minute number of people, at huge But the company makes pumping "state of the art" pollution pre• was also involved in a 3.2 billion liter expense to generations of people who sound like no big deal. Says Jim P vention techniques to protect the cyanide spill in Guyana in August 1995, are not yet born." Volberding, its chief geologist, "We are river. "Our goal is to become a world reportedly killing all aquatic life in the During the projected 14- to 17-year simply pumping water from two wells, class example of resource develop• Omai River. life of the mine, some 345 million tons running it through irrigation pipe for ment," says Schern, the project manag• Laura Riddell, a former of ore and 575 million tons of waste rock about a mile, and letting it return to the er. "The newly formed hills will be Summitville mine employee, expressed would be placed in 300 to 600 foot high ground. It's really quite simple." planted with grasses, shrubs and trees. her regret in an e-mail to Montana Gov. piles near the Blackfoot's flood plain. Another issue involves the use of When the project is complete, it will Marc Racicot in which she urged him to On average, every 75 tons of rock will millions of pounds of ammonium nitrate leave behind a lake so clean that it block the mine at McDonald Meadows: contain 1.5 ounces of gold, or enough to to blast out rock and ore from the pit. meets Montana's drinking water stan• "I own a waterbed about the same make just one ring. The OEA study says blasting chemicals dards. The lake will support aquatic life thickness as the pad liner. Imagine tak• The mining company claims this could seep into area waters, leading to and provide an additional recreational ing this liner, laying it on the ground waste will not contain enough sulfuric increases in algae levels in the river and asset for the Blackfoot Valley." and dumping a couple hundred tons of compounds to cause acid mine drainage. reduced oxygen needed by trout and Critics, however, contend that the jagged rock on it. After the breach of The EPA, however, says the potential aquatic life. Blasting could also clog the industry's record of contamination and the cyanide holding pad occurred, the for acid drainage is of serious concern. Blackfoot with suspended sediments, a catastrophe underscores the risk at cyanide laced water seeped into the In a review of the proposal, the EPA potentially serious problem since more Seven-Up Pete. The mining industry ground water. After a short time the Rio found elevated sulfate concentrations in than 4 square miles would be disturbed has failed to clean up more than a half Grande was dead, and I mean even the groundwater samples, "suggesting that by the mine. A storm could cause wide• million abandoned mines, leaving a tox• trees on the bank of the river, along sulfur is present within the deposits." spread impacts. ic legacy that may cost taxpayers $70 with all the water life. There was also a Another serious effect from the The state of Montana is expected billion to clean up. But the mining jump in the number of miscarriages and mine could result from the company's to release an environmental impact industry claims it has improved its prac• birth defects of people that live along plan to remove all the groundwater near statement on the mine in 1998. A deci• tices, and contends such criticism is no the river. I feel a responsibility for this the pit. In open-pit mining, it's vital to sion could come soon after, with the longer valid. "Trying to compare old, huge mistake." keep the ore dry. This has been prob• first blast of ammonium nitrate explo• historic mines to modern, environmen• The mine at McDonald Meadows lematic at the Carlin Trend gold belt in sive following quickly. The state tally responsible mines is like compar• will be even larger than the mines at northeast Nevada, where companies acknowledges it cannot predict the full ing a Model T Ford to today's modern Summitville and Guyana. have found it necessary to dry out 400 impact of mining in the Blackfoot by automobile with its extensive health, As for Phelps Dodge, its 1996 annu• square miles. Dewatering the desert Phelps Dodge and its partners. Phelps safety and environmental protection," al report claims its operations "meet proved to be six times tougher than one Dodge itself has made hundreds of oth• the Northwest Mining Association, a international standards for protection of company, American Barrick, anticipated. er claims in the valley, and plans to Spokane industry group, said in its the environment, and in many cases · Before mining, it said a pumping rate of oversize waste dumps and cyanide February newsletter. perform better than required by envi• 10,300 gallons per minute would be suf• leaching pads at McDonald Meadows, Nevertheless, a search of public ronmental regulations." But the annual ficient. Later, the company found it allowing the pads to accommodate ore records shows that at least 10 mines in report doesn't point out that in the U.S. needed to pump 60,000 gallons per dug from multiple strip mines. Montana that opened between 1979 and 13 of its mining sites are under review minute. Many of those other claims are on 1994 have leaked a variety chemicals for possible inclusion on the EPA's By comparison, the Seven-Up Pete federal land. There, the 1872 Mining into groundwater or surface water, National Priority List of potential company says it will need to pump only Law would apply, allowing the company including in each case cyanide. Superfund sites. Though most of its 6,000 gallons per minute at a site chat's to buy the land for no more than $5 an Accidents do happen, but occasion- problems stem from decades of neglect larger and much wetter. By digging a acre, pay no royalties and avoid paying ally the industry's reputation is riddled before 1970 and the advent of environ• large and deep pit, Seven-Up Pete Joint for long-term damage. f:3 with incidents of outright treachery. For mental laws, some are more recent. Venture could seriously disrupt delicate Some Montanans, including David :E example, at the Summitville, Colo., Since 1987, for example, more than 20 ground- and surface-water connections James Duncan, vow to put their bodies t= mine, where operations began in 1986, a large spills have been reported at the between the Blackfoot and nearby in harms way if necessary to stop the ; lake of acid mine drainage and cyanide company's Chino copper mine in south• Landers Fork, according to the Clark mine. He says consumers can help by - c has seeped into the Alamosa River, a u western New Mexico, ranging from Fork Coalition's technical consultants, demanding human-safe, wildlife-safe : tributary of the Rio Grande, destroying 1,000 gallons to 180 million gallons. The OEA Research Inc. of Helena. and river-safe gold. "If it isn't recycled, U all aquatic life for 17 miles. The EPA largest went unreported for five weeks. Dewatering the pit could also dry up hoarded, or incidental, your gold is r--- will spend $150 million treating 200 mil• stream edges, destroy spawning and almost certainly the product of a huge o-, o-. lion gallons of contaminated water in a '' The Blackfoot River to me· rearing areas, and strand migrating bull cyanide stripmine," he says. "If uncer• QJ pile of waste rock 12 stories high. At the involves no ideology at all," trout, the consultants say. Geoff Smith, tain of your gold source, remember the § same time, the EPA is pursuing legal says Missoula novelist a staff scientist with the Clark Fork Blackfoot River, your children, your action against a principal owner of David James Duncan, who articulated Coalition, says pumping tests at own squandered tax dollars, and don't G) Summitville, Robert Friedland of his opposition to the mine in an op-ed McDonald Meadows have already failed buy gold at all." • Where Mines Have Polluted in the Past, and What They Can Do to Our Future

"Definition of a gold mine: Hole in the ground, owned by a liar."

-Mark Twain

here's a new rush for riches in the Northwest. In every as water protection," Tuttle says. "It may end up with the weakest state and province, mining companies are proposing mas• standards and the most inviting opportunities· for cyanide heap leach sive strip mines to.bring them treasures of gold, silver operations." T and other metals. Profitable though they may be, each Oregon's state mining law, which Tuttle says is the toughest in the mine would come at a price - scars ?n the land, pollution in public country, requires companies to restore sites and post expensive bonds waters and uncertain futures for local communities. to cover unpaid environmental bills should they arise. Other states The new mines will follow the path of least resistance, says Larry require mining companies to meet the lesser standard of reclamation, Tuttle, director of the Portland-based Center for Environmental which Tuttle compares to "putting lipstick on a corpse." But even Ethics, an advocate for mining law reform. Nevada, with its lax laws, Oregon's law stops short of banning even the most damaging type of will continue to see the most activity, while Alaska and Montana are operation, cyanide heap-leach gold mining. "It's going to happen competing for new mines by softening their water quality regulations, there. You have to find the right combination of entrepreneurial spirit with British Columbia also apparently headed in that direction. At to test Oregon law, and a high-quality gold deposit." the same time, however, Oregon, Washington and Idaho have added As we see in the following five reports, opportunities for mega• new teeth to their laws. "Two years ago, Montana was out front as for mines abound in Cascadia.

EnvironmentalRacism J\lle~ed in Montana Until 1896, Native Americans on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in north-central Montana owned a piece of the Little Rocky Mountains, a range just to the south of the reservation where they traditionally hunted and took part in ceremonies. Then white settlers discovered gold on that land, and the U.S. government schemed to help them take it away. Now, a century later, the Assiniboine and Gros Ventre Tribes are losing their clean water too - this time as a result of pollution from cyanide gold mining. The most recent slight began 18 years ago, when Pegasus Gold Corp. of Spokane chose chose former tribal lands as the place to build the first cyanide heap-leach gold mine in the U.S. Since receiving its initial operating c-, permit, the company has received nine a,o=• permits to expand activities at the n Zortman-Landusky mine. And just last The Zortman-Landusky cyanide gold mine in north-central Montana has been the scen.e of cyanide leaks and acid mine drainage. ==• October, it received permission from the contaminating water on tribal lands below. (Courtesy Clark Fork Pend Oreille Coalition) ;;: U.S. Bureau of Land Management for a ~ 1 Och expansion. This time, the owners system for the town of Zortman. Then, At the same time, the Zortman• Elimination System permits. Pegasus ~ want to triple its size. in 1993 the state of Montana disclosed Landusky mine is now under a consent settled the suit last summer by agreeing a,o The BLM approved the expansion that the mine was producing acidic decree resulting from prosecution in to pay the tribes, the state and the fed- despite a lengthy record of spills and runoff laden with heavy metals - an federal court for numerous and ongoing eral government each $1 million in civil illegal toxic discharges at the site. At effect known as acid mine drainage. violations of the Clean Water Act. The penalties, and to post a $32 million least six accidental cyanide spills There's concern of cyanide, arsenic and U.S. government charged Pegasus with bond to ensure compliance with state occurred between 1982 and 1993, one of lead have leaked into reservation discharging mine wastes without and federal water quality laws. Pegasus which contaminated the water supply waters. National Pollution Discharge also agreed to spend $2 million to fund eologists say Roman mines in Great Britain dug 2,000 years warrant concern in the northwest corner of the continent. ago are leaching sulfuric acids that carry toxic heavy metals Some are new, some are old, others are proposed. Not all are G to nearby streams. This characteristic of mines, known as gold mines, and one, in Southwest Oregon, would in fact be rel• acid mine drainage, is not alien to the Northwest, where rivers atively small. The story here is the trend: What mines have and other water bodies face chronic mine-generated contamina• done in the past, and what they can to do to our future. tion. This map highlights 18 out of the numerous mines that

KENSINGTON MINE The state of Alaska wants to lower a water quality standard to help Coeur Mining lower its costs at the Kensington Mine halfway between TULSEQUA CHIEF MINE Juneau and Haines. Coeur has agreed to drop a tailings dam and The spectacular Taku River runs through some of the wildest coun• cyanide from the milling process. The mine is expected to produce try in British Columbia. Crossing the northwest corner of the 1.9 million ounces of gold over 10 years. A second gold ore body is province into Southeast Alaska, it meets the Lynn Canal just south located nearby. of Juneau. The Taku is the largest salmon producing river north of the Skeena, supporting five species. Though Tulsequa Chief mine closed in the 1950s, it continues to pollute the Taku with acid and ALASKA-JUNEAU GOLD 2 heavy metals. Now a Vancouver, B.C., company wants to reopen the The 110-year-old Alaska-Juneau Gold Mine finally closed in 1997. old mine. The company proposes to build a 100 mile (160 km) road Echo Bay Mines decided after 10 years of study that mining was into the mine would open up the watershed for logging, posing unprofitable. Citizen groups helped stop Echo Bay's plans for cyanide threats to grizzly bear habitat. Other mines are also planned. heap-leach processing and ocean dumping of waste rock.

WINDY CRAGGY MINE In 1990, Geddes Resources proposed to take off the top of 8,000- foot-high Windy Craggy Mountain. The massive potential for acid mine drainage in this, one of the world's most pristine regions, galvanized an international coalition of groups to protect and preserve what has come to be known as the Tatshenshini/Alsek Wilderness Park and World Heritage Site. Recent studies have found acid drainage near exploratory mining holes.

EQUITY SILVER MINE Equity Silver sits directly upstream from steelhead spawning habitat in the Bulkley River. The mine produces between 700,000 and 1 million cubic meters of acid mine drainage effluent every year. The pollution is expected to continue for at least 500 years. The annual cost of water treatment is $1.2 million CAN. ·Meanwhile 42 million tons of tailings are now held underwater to prevent their combina• tion with air, which would cause even more acid mine drainage. Equity Silver is among 13 acid-generating mines in B.C.

REPUBLIC MINE Hecla Mining closed this cyanide mine in 1994 after cyanide and acid TSOLUM RIVER were found offsite. The mine owners were sued for violating the On Vancouver Island, the Tsolum Hiver rflows west from Mount Clean Water Act. A jury recommended fines of nearly $300,000 on Washington. As recently as the 1950s, the Tsolum boasted great two violations. runs of coho, pink, chum and cutthroat salmon. Steelhead ranged from 17 to 23 pounds. A mine opened from 1964-66, producing copper and sulfuric acid. Eventually the poisonous leachate reached CROWN JEWEL MINE the Tsolum and the Courtenay Estuary. Today virtually no salmon Battle Mountain Gold Co. of Houston hopes to transform northeast• return to the Tsolum River. After 30 years, ho treatment has been ern Washington's Buckhorn Mountain into the state's first open-pit found. cyanide gold mine in the quest for 1.6 million ounces of gold. The Crown Jewel Mine would permanently rearrange the mountain's ter• rain and hydrology, removing one-third of its peak, destroyi,ng wet• lands and headwater streams, and creating a 138-acre pit.

DAWN MINE 9 Newmont Gold, the most profitable mining company in the U.S., refuses to cleanup the abandoned Dawn Mine northwest of Spokane. Instead, Dawn Mining Co., a subsidiary of Newmont, wants to import up to 35 million cubic feet of radioactive dirt from around the nation to generate funds for cleaning up the uranium mill site. The sub• sidiary says it is broke and cannot afford to clean up otherwise.

ROCK CREEK MINE ASARCO wants to mine copper and silver by tunneling 9,000 feet under the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness Area. Plans call for dis• charging 1,500 gallons of treated mine water per minute directly 111to Clark Fork River for 30 years. Critics say treatment methods are unproven. Miners will dump waste rock 400 yards from the river in

GRASSY-MOUNTAIN Newmont Gold gave up its cyanide gold project at Grassy Mountain BLACKFOOT RIVER in Malheur County in 1995 after a protracted battle. In 1991, its pro• posal spurred the Oregon Environmental Quality Commission into Phelps Dodge plans to build Montana's largest gold mine at 7-Up enacting some of the strictest mining regulations in the country. In Pete Mountain next to the Blackfoot River's flood plain. Abandoned 1994, Newmont spent millions in its successful defeat of a ballot mines upstream leach acid into the headwaters, and are now a measure that would have further tightened regulations. Now Superfund site. The concern is that the Phelps Dodge Corp. project Newmont is exploring two other Malheur County sites not far from IBOMPSON CREEK MINE would leach acid and cyanide into a world class trout stream, threat• Grassy Mountain, now owned by Atlas Mining. en rare bull trout and westslope cutthroat trout habitat, and put jobs The Thompson Creek molybdenum mine in Central Idaho is develop• in the recreation and tourism industries at risk. ing acid mine drainage. The giant mine has more than 90 million tons of tailings stored behind a potentially unstable earthen dam, 5 miles ROUGH AND READY CREEK from the Snake River. "It could blow," says Will Patric of the Mineral Policy Center, "and if it did, we could have a horrific disaster on the CLARK FORK RIVER The integrity of an ecosystem of great antiquity and diversity, and a Salmon River." wild river of singular beauty may soon be lost to a proposed strip The state of Montana is seeking damages of $765 million from the mine in the Siskiyou National Forest. The mining proposal is coupled Atlantic Richfield Co. for pollution stemming from a century of copper with the largest pending mineral patent in the United States. If grant• mining and smelting in the Upper Clark Fork Basin. The nation's ed, for $2.50 per acre, NICORE, a mining company based in Cave largest Superfund site covers 130 miles from Butte, site of the enor• Junction, Ore. would become the owner of 4,380 acres of federal mous Berkeley Pit strip mine, to near Missoula. Some 125,000 peo• land m the Rough and Ready watershed. More than 300 plant ple live nearby, their drinking water at risk. Nearly 25 square miles are species are found m this 23,000 acre watershed. To a growing num• devoid of vegetation. Six million cubic yards of arsenic and metals• ber of botanists, writers, hikers, photographers and wildflower polluted sediment sit behind a small dam upstream of Missoula, enthusiasts the watershed contains some of the loveliest, loneliest enough to cover the city to a depth of 70 to 110 feet. and most intriguing country in the Siskiyous.

ZORTMAN-LANDUSKY MINE The Zortman-Landusky cyanide gold mine is located on federal land, but drains cyanide and acid-laden metals into groundwater, polluting surface and groundwaters. Last year, Pegasus Gold settled a Clean Water Act lawsuit for $37 million. The company now wants to triple the size of the mine. The tribes are now in court to stop the expan• sion, and want any past damage cleaned up.

map illustration by Rick Pinchera Cover Story c o N 11 N u Ea

a new water supply system on the reser• deep. Cyanide-laced tailings would be ment seized those lands in 1892, after acid-forming waste rock that will remain vation and to fund studies of mining's dumped in one stream basin, eventually gold was discovered in the area, but the when the mine is played out. impacts on the reservation's aquatic forming a layer of sludge at least 100 Colville Tribes retain their traditional Although the 1872 Mining Law resources and on human health. feet deep. Water to operate the mine for hunting, fishing 'and food-gathering makes it difficult for the Forest Service Nonetheless, Pegasus did not agree its eight-and-a-half-year life would be rights. to say no to mining on federal lands, to stop the pollution until it had extract• piped 2,500 feet up the mountain from Local ranchers like Jeff Austin, who Rehanek said the agency could have ed all the ore it was permitted to the Myers Creek Basin, affecting flow owns 512 acres homesteaded by his chosen an alternative to open-pit chemi• remove. And the mine still lacks a pol• for fish and downstream users. grandfather on the south side of cal mining that would have far fewer lution discharge permit. During mining, water from the pit Buckhorn Mountain, are concerned environmental impacts and would still Marianne Dugan, a lawyer with the would be pumped to tailings ponds and about the disruption of the flow of water allow the company to make a profit on Western Environmental Law Center in recycled for use in the mining process. from Buckhorn Mountain. "I got three its gold mine, though a lesser one - Eugene, which represents the tribes, When the gold mine is played out, the springs and a year-round creek on my underground mining. said the outcome could set a precedent company proposes to fill the pit on an place, and I need that water for my cat• "The Forest Service is required to for regulating toxic discharges from accelerated timetable by pumping 300 tle," Austin said. "I know that Battle choose the least environmentally dam• open pit mines. When the pollution gallons of water per minute into it for _ Mountain Gold can't guarantee I'll have aging option that is still economically from such mines affects surface waters, more than five years. (Under normal my water when they pull out." feasible," he said. "They admitted in they can no longer be considered non• conditions it would take 26 years to fill a Residents of rural Okanogan County the record of decision that underground point sources of pollution, Dugan said, pit of that size.) This "augmented pit have also raised concerns about dust, mining would be economically feasible. and thus can no longer be exempted fill" is intended to dilute heavy metals noise, the narrow county roads on which They aren't required to maximize the from compliance with many provisions and acids in the pit water and bring mine trucks would travel, and the effect company's profit." of the Clean Water Act. water flow on the mountain to a quicker on farm animals from around-the-clock - Kathie Durbin The consent decree requires equilibrium. blasting and other mine operations. Pegasus to pay for a comprehensive Because the pit would create a per• Buckhorn Mountain is a popular investigation and monitoring program manent hydrological shift, Battle hunting area, drawing hunters from for water quality and related human Mountain Gold proposes to mitigate the across the state, but during mining 2,000 Big Mines Threaten health problems. The BLM, however, damage by drilling a hole through the acres of public land would be fenced off rushed to approve the mine's expansion mountain so some of the pit water from access. Environmentalists say the before the studies could start - and would flow back into the Myers Creek mine would disrupt wildlife corridors ~allnon ~ountri despite the fact that the company's past basin. But the Environmental stretching north into rugged, undevel• assurances that operations would not Protection Agency said in October that oped areas of British Columbia. The 15-year-old Thompson Creek cause acid mine drainage had proved to the mining company's proposal would Rehanek said Battle Mountain molybdenum mine in Central Idaho was be wrong, Dugan said. still cause "significant and unmitigable Gold made some improvements in its never supposed to have an acid. Now, The tribes view the impacts to their adverse ecological impacts to wetlands, final plan, for example improving the acid mine draiage has been-identified as air, water and cultural sites as an exam• streams and springs on Buckhorn liner system that would collect arsenic• a threat from the project's open pit, ple of environmental racism. In their Mountain." laden tailings. Nevertheless, he charac• waste dumps and tailings dam. And appeal of the BLM decision, they note Battle Mountain Gold won a major terized the preferred alternative as "an while molybdenum is not exactly gold that federal studies show the average victory May 5 when Northwest appalling mishmash of pseudo-science." - it's a gray powder used in making civil penalty imposed on a violator of Regional Forester Bob Williams denied Among other omissions, he said, the industrial alloys - the mine illustrates environmental laws in a minority area is all appeals of the project. Eight environ• chosen alternativeo lacks plans for treat- why open pit mines-make people ner• only one-sixth as large as a penalty mental groups and the Colville Tribes ing the pit water and the mountains of vous, especially when they are built in a imposed in an area where the popula• had filed four separate appeals challeng• tion is predominantly white. It takes 20 ing approval of the mining company's peroent longer for advanced hazardous proposal by the Okanogan National waste sites in minority communities to Forest. be placed on the Superfund National Dave Kliegman of the Okanogan Priority List than sites in white neigh• Highlands Alliance accused the agency borhoods. of "hiding behind the 1872 Mining Law "The BLM's rush to approve this to avoid protecting public land" and of expansion proposal despite Pegasus' leaving myriad questions unanswered in ongoing unpermitted water pollution its record of decision. "They're going to fits precisely into this pattern of under• drill a hole and take pit water of ques• enforcement when environmental laws tionable quality and replace headwaters. affect minority communities," Dugan There will be a permanent impair- said. - ment." - Paul Koberstein Some damage, like the destruction of three headwater streams on Buckhorn Mountain, simply can't be mitigated, said Woody Rehanek of the The Battle for Okanogan Highlands Alliance. "Headwaters are not erector sets; you can't just bury them and replace them BuckhornMountain with another section of stream. You wouldn't function very well without Battle Mountain Gold Co. of your head and streams don't either." Houston hopes to begin transforming a State environmental officials have remote northeastern Washington.moun• expressed grave doubts about the water tain into the state's first open-pit chemi• scheme. In December the Washington cal gold mine later this year in the quest Department of Ecology notified Battle for 1.6million ounces of gold. But the Mountain Gold that it would be unlike• mine, on federal land in Okanogan ly to receive the state water right it 83 County, is opposed by all the state's needs to proceed "due to the stream ::!!: major environmental groups and the depletion on the Myers Creek basin ..= Confederated Tribes of the Colville expected to result from the hydrological c Reservation. And, unresolved water ci effects of the pit mine" and the effect c rights issues could still doom the pro• c.:I on senior water right holders in the 00 ject. c basin, including some who live across c.:t The Crown Jewel Mine would per• the border in Canada. r--.. manently rearrange the terrain and The Colville Confederated Tribes ~ hydrology of Buckhorn Mountain, strongly oppose any mine development Q) removing one-third of the mountain's that threatens their treaty rights. The § peak, destroying wetlands, springs and proposed mine site lies- within lands that 8,000 linear feet of headwater streams, A 400-foot high sand dam at the Thompson Creek molybdenum mine in Central Idaho once made up the northern part of the holds back 90 million tons of mine tailings. Yellow discoloration at the dam's base indicates and creating a 138-acre pit 900 feet Colville Reservation. The U.S. govern- acid formation. caused by pyrite reacting with air and water. (Courtesy Boulder-White Clouds Council/Lighthawk) 110 inches of precipitation annuallyjis lute the Taku with acid and heavy met• inexplicable. als. Now a Vancouver, B.C., company · Rough and Ready, in some seasons wants to reopen the old mine. "The old a river, at other times a creek, flows out mine would be filled in. There would of the Kalmiopsis Wilderness and the be no acid drainage after that," John South Kalmiopsis Roadless Area, into · Greig, chair of Redfern, told the the Rough and Ready Botanical Area. Vancouver Sun. The creek's exceptional water clarity is Others are dubious about Redfern's a reflection of the integrity of its water• plans. Don Weir of the Taku shed. Its unrestrained sweeping bends Wilderness Association says acid mine and braided stream channels are typical drainage destroyed salmon runs in the of the raw wild landscape of its origin. Tulsequa. "The fishery has not recov• The ancient gnarled cedar and pine, ered yet even though it's been 40 to 50 rooted along its banks are survivors of years since they stopped mining." extremes - flood, drought, sun and A provincial review of the proposal rock. Native bunch grasses, wild azalea says that "reactivation of the (mine) and rare willow grace its sparse riparian could result in chronic discharge of zone, punctuated by springs that form effluent contaminated with acids, heavy unique wetlands of rare and carnivo• metals, petroleum products and/or toxic rous plants, lilies and orchids. agents." In recognition of the uniqueness Another concern is the company's and the nationally outstanding botani• proposal to build a 100 mile (160 km) Rough and Ready Creek in Southwest Oregon.s Siskiyou.s is home to 300 native plants and cal and ecological values of Rough and the largest pending mineral patent in the U.S. (Courtesy the Siskiyou Project) Ready Creek, the Forest Service deter• The industry's persistence in fragile, salmon-bearing watershed like Creek to buy up to 2,500 acres for $5 or mined that it is eligible for a Wild and the Salmon. less per acre. "We want Bruce Babbitt Scenic River study. But all of this, the downplaying the profound Thompson Creek is just one of to come out here and stand on the product of millennia, is about to be three open pit mines sharing space with banks of the Salmon River," says undone by the NICORE Mine. The environmental implications of salmon in this part of Idaho. A few Lynne Stone of the Boulder-White Forest Service's position is that under miles west of Thompson Creek, Hecla Clouds Council, a group advocating the 1872 Mining Law, individuals or that project. probably one of Company's Grouse Creek cyanide gold mining reform. "We want him to know corporations cannot be denied the privi• the highest risk (mines) ever mine has had Clean Water Act viola- that giving away public land for mining lege of mining, even on sensitive and tions. After just four years of operation, jeopardizes the water quality and fish of priceless lands. By default, therefore, brought forward in North it has gone bust and is now shutting this precious river which is the mining reigns supreme on the Siskiyou down, laying off 180 workers. lifeblood fo central Idaho." National Forest with its 6,000 active America. only serves to Monitoring will be necessary for yeares - Paul Koberstein mining claims - more than on any oth• erode public trust. to come to protect nearby salmon er national forest in the Northwest. streams. And downstream, the new The NICORE Project is a scheme -Alan Young Beartrack gold mine is now going full to produce stainless steel from the speed, a project with two open pits and ~trip-mininga concentrations of minerals found in road into the mine would open up the a sprawling cyanide heap leach pad next the soils of the Rough and Ready watershed for logging, posing threats to to a Salmon River tributary. watershed, mainly nickel. In its initial grizzly bear habitat. The Thompson Creek mine uses Wilflernessof Hare phase, the mining operation proposes In March, the Outdoor Recreation no cyanide, but like the other mines it 15 miles of road through a Botanical Council of B.C. named the Taku as the has stripped the land and dug an enor• and Roadless Reserve, fording Rough second most endangered river in the mous pit. For at least 10 years, indica• Wil~flowers and Ready Creek and its tributaries at province. And in April, American Rivers tions of acid mine drainage have been 11 locations. Twenty-five ton trucks listed the Taku as one of the conti• noticed. But the U.S. Forest Service has The integrity of an ecosystem of will transport 40,000 tons of ore and nent's 20 most threatened rivers. waited just as long to do anything about great antiquity and diversity, and a wild stockpile it at a place the BLM has "The Taku is a vitally significant it. Finally, later this spring it will issue a river of singular beauty may soon be designated as an "area of critical envi• transboundary resource, important to draft environmental impact statement lost to a proposed strip mine in the ronmental concern," where now both Canadians and Americans," said that will analyze possible solutions for Siskiyou National Forest. The mining stands a lovely remnant of valley bot• Tom Cassidy of American Rivers. "It is containing the acidic waters. proposal is coupled with the largest tom forest. An onsite smelter may be the largest unprotected wilderness river But that's just one problem. pending mineral patent in the United constructed or the ore transported system on the western shore of North Another is the 400-foot tailings dam States. If granted, for $2.50 per acre, elsewhere for processing. America. And it is one of the largest built of sand and waste rock. The dam NICO RE, a mining company owned by The public will bear the cost of the salmon producing streams of Southeast currently holds back 90 million tons of Walter Freeman of Cave Junction, Ore. NICORE Environmental Impact Alaska. It would be nothing short of a tailings, some of which could produce would become the owner of 4,380 acres Statement and the· administration of the crime to let this mine go forward with• acid. The impoundment eventually will of federal land in the Rough and Ready mining operation. NICO RE will pay out ironclad environmental protections hold 200 million tons. Yellow discolor• watershed. just $100 per mining claim per year. ... in place." ing at the base. of the dam indicates More than 300 plant species are -Barbara Ullian Some say the government in acid formation. Events such as land• found in this 23,000 acre watershed. To British Columbia is not likely to slides, erosion, earthquakes or water a growing number of botanists, writers, oppose this project; as it did two years system failures at the mine could send hikers, photographers and wildflower ago when it rejected the proposed acid and dissolved heavy metals down• enthusiasts the watershed contains Reopening an m~ Windy Craggy mine in the ward into the Salmon River. "It could some of the loveliest, loneliest and Tatshenshini-Alsek Wilderness. That blow," says Will Patric of the Mineral most intriguing country in the interna• cyanide gold project and its acid mine Policy Center, a Washington, D.C., tionally renowned Siskiyou Mountains Woun~ on B.~.'s Taku drainage potential would have been a organization advocating mining law of southwest Oregon and northwest major threat to water quality in a World reform, "and if it did, we could have a California. The spectacular Taku River runs Heritage Reserve. Now the powerful horrific disaster on the Salmon River." Perhaps, as David Rains Wallace through some of the wildest country in B.C. mining industry is pushing for less The owner, Thompson Creek notes in his book, The Klamath Knot, it's British Columbia. Crossing the north• government regulation, says Alan Mine Co., denies that acid mine the awe one feels when looking out west corner of the province into Young of the Environmental Mining drainage is forming at the site, but both over a community of life forty million Southeast Alaska, it meets the Lynn Council of B.C. in Victoria. .... the EPA and Forest Service contend years old. Perhaps it's the knowledge Canal just south of Juneau. The Taku "The industry's persistence in !i that the species inhabiting Rough and is the largest salmon producing river downplaying the profound environmen• otherwise. Indeed, the EPA cites this ""OD mine as an example where acid mine Ready's landscape have adapted over north of the Skeena, supporting five tal implications of that project, probably drainage occurred unexpectedly. the millennia to the harshness of the species. Decades ago, prospectors one of the highest risk (mines) ever Meanwhile, the company wants to red peridotite rock, serpentine soils, found gold about 45 miles upstream, brought forward in North America, only patent the public land on which it mineral imbalances and concentrations on the Tulsequa River, the Taku's . serves to erode public trust," Young mines. This year, Interior Secretary of heavy metals while less resolute main tributary. says. Bruce Babbitt will decide whether to species have disappeared. The beauty Though the Tulsequa Chief mine - Paul Koberstein grant the patent and allow Thompson of this stark red rock rainforest (60 _to closed in the 1950s, it continues to pol- Book The Life of a Daily Newspaper From Stuff: The Secret Lives of Everyday Things, by John C. Ryan and Alan Thein Durning, copyright 1997 Northwest Environment Watch.

y name is Dana, and I ... a muddy landing area, leaving a "skid trail" am a consumer. Today, as on the slope. Mud and rocks tumbled toward the creek. The logs were loaded on an 18- M soon as I got out of bed, I wheel flatbed truck. The driver found his started consuming. I had a coffee. I way through a dozen gears and steered his ate breakfast. I read a newspaper. I load over dirt logging roads that twisted and turned through the mountains like so much put on my clothes. I commuted to spaghetti. He made his way to a sawmill in work. All day long I went about my Quesnel, a town beside the Fraser River. The ordinary business, consuming stuff Fraser is the world's greatest producer of and unwittingly affecting places and salmon, but logging, road building and other disturbances of the watershed have con• people around the world. tributed to an 80 percent decline in salmon over the past century. I picked up my morning paper some• With the next rain, more mud and rocks where in· my front yard. It was in the bushes spilled from the road and the skid trails into again. I pulled the paper out of the plastic bag Penfold Creek, smothering sockeye salmon and the rubber band it came in. eggs in the gravel bed of the stream. British The paper was a half-pound (220 grams) Columbia has roughly 150,000 miles of log• of newsprint covered with two grams of petro• ging roads - enough to circle the planet six leum- and soybean-based inks. Two-thirds of times. The B.C. Ministry of Forests plans to the pages, and two-thirds of the ink, were remove 3,000 miles annually to reduce the devoted to advertising. I mostly read the damage to fish and wildlife. It also plans to comics. Two-thirds of American adults read a build twice as many miles of new logging newspaper an average weekday; three-fourths roads each year. Crofton. Then the chips cooked in a soup of again in 60 years - long before they can do on a Sunday. caustic soda and sodium sulfite. These chem• recapture the C02 emitted in turning 300- Pulp icals are not especially toxic, but they com• year-old trees into newsprint. Logging of Trees bine to give Crofton the rotten-egg aroma of a coastal rain forests is responsible for one• The Quesnel mill sawed the Jogs. About mill town. fourth of British Columbia's greenhouse gas The paper was half-recycled and half half of each log was converted into lumber; After nearly 12 hours in a giant cooker, emissions. made from trees. Most of the trees (those that the rest became chips and sawdust. These the tightly bound wood fibers had separated Overall, virgin newsprint (which is most• provided 45 percent of the newsprint) were residues were trucked to a nearby pulp mill, from one another. The pulp was then washed ly mechanical pulp) has lower environmental 150-year-old Engelmann spruce and sub• where they were mixed with Fraser River to remove undigested knots of wood and impacts than most virgin paper: making alpine fir trees in the Cariboo Mountains of water and cooked to make a pulp of weak, chemicals (for reuse). The mill converted mechanical pulp requires less energy and central British Columbia. Canada produces yellow fibers. Hydroelectricity from a dam on about SO percent of the incoming wood to water and fewer chemical additives than mak• most of the world's newsprint; B.C. alone pro• the Peace River (which runs from northeast• pulp; the rest it burned for energy. ing kraft pulp. Mechanical pulp is not chlorine duces one-tenth the world total. Loggers, ern B.C. toward the Arctic Ocean) powered bleached. It is also easier to de-ink and recycle earning CAN$20 (US$15) an hour and wield• both mills. This "mechanical pulping" man• Bleaching than other papers. That is why curbside recy• ing Husqvarna chainsaws, felled the trees aged to convert 95 percent of the wood cling programs, including the one in my neigh• from a steep slope above Penfold Creek. residues into pulp. It made a low-grade pulp The kraft pulp - brown like a paper borhood, collect newsprint separately. They were lucky to have jobs: many of their that would quickly yellow with age or expo• grocery bag - was then bleached with chlo• friends were laid off in the 1980s as machines sure to sunlight. The pulp was lightly rine dioxide. A tiny fraction of the chlorine Recycling did more of the cutting and processing of bleached with hydrogen peroxide. reacted with organic chemicals in the pulp to trees. From 1980 to 1990, the number of tim• Five percent of the newsprint in my form various dioxins and furans, among them From the mills in Quesnel and Crofton, ber industry jobs in B.C. fell by a third even as morning paper came from another forest and TCDD and TCDF - two of the most car• the pulp was trucked to a paper mill in the volume of wood in the province increased was processed in a "kraft" pulp mill in cinogenic substances known. Beyond causing Spokane. Canada provides more than half the 16 percent. Crofton, on British Columbia's Vancouver cancer, dioxins can also suppress the immune virgin pulp in U.S. newsprint. The paper mill Except for a 160-foot-wide strip of selec• Island. Newsprint makers add kraft pulp to system and produce severe birth defects and combined the virgin pulp with recycled pulp tive logging along the creek, loggers and their mechanical pulp to make their product reproductive disorders in humans and other - 80 percent old newspapers and 20 percent machines removed every tree for 100 acres. stronger. (Kraft is German for strength; kraft animals. Pulp mills in B.C. have dramatically old magazines. A truck had collected the Clearcutting ofwildlands accounts for 90 per• pulping yields longer and stronger fibers than reduced their toxic emissions since the late papers curbside at homes in Spokane; the 00 cent of logging in British Columbia. Some II.I other pulping processes.) The kraft pulp 1980s; average discharges of TCDD dropped magazines were unsold copies returned from :::Iii: clearcuts in the Caribou Mountains are so began as 300-year-old western red cedar and by 85 percent from 1990 to 1993. newsstands. Magazine publishers routinely t= large they can be seen from space. (I took a c hemlock trees. They were logged in a tem• Pulping the virgin fibers in Crofton and print far more magazines than they sell; most iii rafting trip in B.C. last summer and heard a perate rain forest in the Paradise watershed on Quesnel required nearly a third of a kilowatt• go to landfills. c joke about the local definition of selective u the mainland coast of British Columbia. (I've hour ~f energy, enough to power the refriger• To make the recycled pulp, blades IO logging: select a mountain, then log it!) c always wanted to see this coast by taking the ator in my kitchen for two hours. Some of the churned old papers and magazines in a tank of c.:, ferry up the Inside Passage to Alaska. I guess energy came from wood waste burned at the warm water and detergent. Clay fillers from Logging Roads I should go soon, before much more of it is mills. Burning the wood waste generated heat the magazine paper and the detergent com• clearcut.) and smoke and released carbon dioxide, the bined to clean the ink off the paper. The ink (1) After the branches and treetops were Trucks carried the logs over a muddy principal climate-altering greenhouse gas. adhered to air bubbles in the tank and rose to § sawed off, a choker-setter in a hard hat logging road to the shore. A tugboat hauled The seedlings planted in the Paradise the surface, where machinery skimmed it off attached cables to the trees, and a diesel• them to a sawmill on Vancouver Island, and clearcut will absorb carbon dioxide as they like cream. Most of the waste paper turned O powered yarder dragged them up a hillside to the resulting chips and dust were trucked to grow. But these seedlings are to be Jogged back to pulp, but 15 percent of it (including both fibers and ink) became sludge, which truckers hauled to a landfill. Because the recy• cling process weakens paper fibers, newsprint can be recycled only three or four times; it is then replaced with virgin fibers. Printing

The mill in Spokane formed the paper IHfOHNRTIOH OH NIHIHG EUEHTS and spun it into massive rolls, each four and a half feet wide and four feet across and weigh• • Alaska Clean Water Alliance, advocates for conserva• PUGET SOUND 2100 Adopt a Beach launches its ing about a ton. An 18-wheeler hauled the rolls tion, fishing, subsistence, tourism and public health. stewardship program to adopt all 2100 miles of Puget across the Cascades to a printing plant near PO Box 1441 Haines, AK 99827; (907) 766-2296. Sound shorelines with a kickoff event beginning at 9 AM at the Alki Community Center in Seattle, a Shoreline • Boulder-White Clouds Council, advocating environ• Steward training session at 1 PM in the Gig Harbor area, mental safeguards against mining in Central Idaho, PO and a variety of stewardship projects you can take part in Box 3719, Ketchum ID 83440, (208) 726-8262, around Puget Sound. Call Adopt a Beach at (206) 632- Beyond causing cancer. www.desktop.org)iruf/bwcc. 1390 or e-mail [email protected] for more information. • Cascadia Times Online, for source documents and oth• dioxins can also suppress FRIENDS OF CLAYOQUOT SOUND, advocates for er information on mining, as well as interactive discus• Vancouver Island's temperate rain forest, are on a road sions. http://cascadia.times.org. the immune system and tour of the West with slides and video show. Wednesday, produce severe birth defects • Clark Fork Pend Oreille Coalition, citizens concerned May 28, 12:30 PM, Seattle Public Library, Downtown about mining's environmental impacts in Montana and Branch, Room 550. Friends of Clayoquot Sound are on a and reproductive disorders Idaho. Extensive information about mines at its web road tour of the West Coast with their slide/video show site, www.montana.com/cfpoc. PO Box 7593, Missoula on our rain forests to the north. Call (206) 386-4623 or in humans and other animals. MT 59807; (406) 542-0539. (604) 725-2527 for information. Pulp mills in B.C. have dra• • Dawn Watch, advocates for clean-up of Dawn Mine. Contact Owen Berio, PO Box 193, Springdale, WA matically reduced their toxic 99173 (509) 233-8523. COHfEHEHCES emissions since the late • Inland Empire Public Lands Council, advocates for dean-up of mining wastes from ldaho,s Silver Valley. WILD IDAHO, the annual conference of the Idaho 1980s: average discharges of PO Box 2174, Spokane, WA 99210, (509) 327-1699 Conservation League, at Redfish Lake Lodge, May 16- 18. Celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Sawtooth TCDD (dioxin) dropped by 85 • Mineral Policy Center, advocates for reform of the National Recreation Area: $100-$125. (208) 345-6933. 1872 U.S. General Mining Law, 1612 K St NW, Washington, DC 20006; (202) 887-1872 SISKIYOU ECOLOGY CONFERENCE, May 30-June percent from 1990 to 1993. 1, Cave Junction. email [email protected] for information. • Mining Resources on Eco-Net, news and web links about mining on the Internet. www.igc.apc.org)miningj ENERGY RESTRUCTURING CONFERENCE. Review deregulation in the Northwest. Members of the • Montana DEQ, conducting state environmental impact Clinton administration, the Northwest congressional del• downtown Seattle. High-speed presses printed analysis of Seven-Up Pete Joint Venture cyanide gold egation and interest groups have been invited, and for• the day's edition with black and color inks. mine proposal in the Blackfoot Valley, (406) 444-4988 mer Oregon Sen. Mark Hatfield will speak. Friday, May The black ink was a mixture of petroleum• 30, Bonneville Power Administration auditorium in based resins and oils from California and a • Montana Environmental Information Center, PO Box 1184, Helena MT 59624. (406) 443-2520. Portland. For more information, contact the Northwest small amount of carbon black made from oil Public Power Association, (503) 289-9411. drilled in the Gulf of Mexico. The colored inks www.initco.net/-meic were about one-third soybean oil from Illinois, • Northwest Mining Association, advocates for industrial THE 7th ANNUAL Community Strategic Training with small amounts of petrochemical pigments use of public lands resources. A "wise use" group seek• Initiative, sponsored by the Western States Center in added. The inks were produced in Kent and ing less government regulation of mining. 10 N. Post Portland, offers intensive one- and two-day skills-building Tukwila, industrial suburbs south of Seattle. Street, Suite 414, Spokane, Washington 99201; (509) workshops, and speakers presenting cutting edge political The newspaper came to my neighbor• 624-1158; www.nwma.org. analysis and strategies. August 2-5 at Reed College in hood in a gasoline-fueled station wagon. The Portland. For more information call (503) 228-8866. driver lobbed the paper toward my front door • Okanogan Highland Alliance, opposition to the pro• but hit the bushes instead. The paper was posed Crown Jewel cyanide gold mine. PO Box 163, bound in a rubber band (made in Hong Kong Tonasket, WA, 98855; (509) 485-3361. from petroleum) and wrapped in a clear sheath HEPODTS of low-density polyethylene from New Jersey. • Pacific Rivers Council, P.O. Box 10798 Eugene, OR I saved the rubber band and threw out the bag. 97440. (541) 345-0119; http://www.pacrivers.org) THE LONG-AWAITED Draft Environmental Impact I scanned the front section, read • Phelps Dodge/Seven-Up Pete Joint Venture, propo• Statement for the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem "Dilbert" and a few other comics, and dropped nents of gold mine next to the Blackfoot River, PO Management Project will be available from the U.S. the paper in the recycling bin. It was one of 38 Forest Service at the end of May. Call (503) 325-2971. million newspapers recycled daily in the Box 1117, Lincoln, MT 59639; (406) 362-4555. United States; 22 million others are thrown • Taku Wilderness Association, producers of "Taku," a away each day. Later, a diesel recycling truck video on the remote wilderness in Northwest British hauled the paper to a warehouse. Depending Columbia. Narrated by David Suzuki. $15. Box 142, PUBLICRTIOHS on fluctuating market prices, my paper would Atlin, B.C., VOW lAO. either become newsprint again, go into card• HABITAT HOTLINE, the monthly publication of the • The Siskiyou Regional Education Project, advocating board, or be exported to Asia. Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission, with news protection of SW Oregon public lands and resources, about state and federal actions affecting habitat in the PO Box 220, Cave Junction, OR 97523; (541) 474-2265. West. Thorough and well-researched. Contact editor John C. Ryan is research director of • Washington Environmental Council, 1100 Second Stephen Phillips, 45 SE 82nd Drive, Suite 100, orthwest Environment Watch. Alan Thein Avenue, Suite 102, Seattle WA 98101. (206) 622-8103. Gladstone OR 97207; (503) 650-5400. Durning is its founder and executive director. You can obtain a copy of "Stuff' from NEW by calling (206) 447-1880. The book was printed • Publicize your euent. publication. book. web site or actiuity in [ascadia Times. Send information to Cascadia Resource Guide. 25-6 HW 23rd Place '406 Portland OR in Vancouver, B.C., using soybean-based ink mm. Deadline for submissions is the 10th of each month . and recycled paper. ..._~~~~~~~~ ...... ---- ...... ~-==~~~~~~~~e When the Forest Service Breaks the Law: If You Diel you bow? Protest, You Pay • 72 peroent·of all tlimberland5 rn by NatalieS hapiro the U.S. are alreaoy in private eggy Sue McRae owes a logging company to refrain from activities while a with NMFS regarding the impact of the ownership, including the vast company $90,000 for sitting in a road. hearing on the case was pending. The sales on listed salmon species. In the majority of tbe highly productive . P The good news is that no logging hearing occurred in April, but the judge's Cove/Mallard watershed, there are two: land. · · ,,.. · trucks have been) rolling along the road decision is yet to come .. chinook and sockeye salmon. The Forest this winter. Last fall sawa series of-ups and Activists pouring over documents Service has only a vague idea of conditions downs for citizens fighting the contentious obtained through the Freedom of before logging, making it improbable that Cove/Mallard timber sales in central Idaho. Information Act, as well as observing what the agency will produce any credible analy• ·•The total amount cut from our Activists have been using various tools loggers and road builders have actually sis of impacts. to try to stop 200 cutting units and 145 done in the woods, have found blatant vio• Cove/Mallard isn't the only roadless nationaf·forests ~uals t1nly'3:·9 miles of road from desecrating this lations of several environmental laws, the area subject to Forest Service deceptions. perceot1of tl)e wood fiBer unspoiled gem of roadless area. From law• forest plan, and the timber sale contracts. Three hours northeast of Boise, the Boise suits. to letters to educational roadshows to These discoveries form the basis of the National Forest has mapped areas in the ~mericans consum~. sitting in logging roads, activists have suc• lawsuit, which requires that the sales be roadless Deadwood River drainage it deter• ceeded in slowing down the sales signifi• halted until the Forest Service does a sup• mined are most susceptible to disease, cantly. The nine sales were scheduled to plemental environmental impact statement insects and wildfire. There, in early 1996, • Currently. half of all the trees i~ be completed in 1997, but only about 15 (EIS). the for~st offered a salvage sale under the percent of the logging and road building has infamous Salvage Rider. the U.S; are '.exported as raw:. been completed. The fire of rage and resis• Stephen Davis, an Idaho Sporting logs and minimall}' processed For their troubles, a dozen activists Congress biologist, was denied repeated who protested the sales in 1993 now owe tance will continue this requests to inspect the files on this sale, forest products. big bucks to the company building the which are public records. So Davis hiked roads in Cove/Mallard. Last November an summer. hopefully spread• into Deadwood, and found the true intent Idaho County jury decided that the of the "salvage" sale. The only trees to be • American citizens own more' activists collectively owed Highland ing to other roadless areas cut were the huge green, live old-growth Enterprises $1.2 million in punitive fines ponderosa pines. All of the areas were tJ;lan 200 million acres of and compensatory damages from monetary under siege. When agen• determined to be susceptible to disease, federal forest land, and taxpay• losses that the protests allegedly caused. insects and wildlife in the analysis, yet It is unlikely that Highland will see cies refuse to obey the law. none of the marked trees showed any sign ers paid $960, million toJog it. the money; the activistsare all dirt poor. of insects or disease, according to Dr. But the point was to send a chilling mes• or when the judges side Arthur Partridge, forest pathologist for the sage to activists: If you protest, you pay. with the timber industry. University of Idaho. • 58 perc'ent of Americans That is the goal of this type of lawsuit, Under public pressure, the Forest called a "SLAPP" suit, or "strategic lawsuit Service reclassified the Deadwood sale as a oppose .all commercial extrac• against public participation." It's a favorite the only thing left is rage "green" or live tree sale. So far, as activists tion on public lands. (Protect tool of polluting industries to try to silence and resistance. Come to have determined, the Forest Service has citizens who fight back. spent $460,000 to ~ark 86,000 trees t~ be Our Public Lands, Eugene OR) However, activists received a victory Idaho this summer. logged, and cut 41 helicopter pads. All this on a different issue - theright to be in a was done before the draft EIS, a brazen closed area of the national forests. Closing violation of NEPA. • Less than 10 percent of the contentious logging areas to the public has The fact that the Forest Service so been a common practice by the Forest blatantly lies and fails to follow environ• Pacific Northwest's original old Service. Every year, activists have been mental laws give activists ammunition. growth forests remain intact. shut out of logging areas by a federal clo• The National Environmental Policy Information gleaned from the FOIA docu• sure order once they begin protesting. The Act says that if changes have occurred ments goes to the woods with monitoring Forest Service says that closures protect either in the project itself or in the affected teams. Activists compare what the Forest public safety; activists say closures keep environment, a supplemental analysis is Service says with what is actually happen• • Gommcfrcial a~d recreational out witnesses. Fines up to $250 and three required. That is the case with the ing on the ground. months in jail have been levied on activists Cove/Mallard sales. Sale units and roads The fire of rage and resistance will salmoll' fishery in the Pacific found guilty of this misdemeanor. have been changed since the original EIS. continue this summer, hopefully spreading Northwest contribute over 1997 may be different. Recently, U.S. In addition, water quality has significantly to other roadless areas under siege. When 6,2,000,'jobs and over $t25 District Judge Edward Lodge, in two sepa• changed: when the EIS was written in agencies refuse to obey the law, or when rate cases, overruled convictions on 1990, water quality was high in streams that the judges side with the timber industry, billion annually to the regional activists found guilty of being in a closed provided endangered salmon habitat. Four the only thing left is rage and resistance. economy, despite the fact tnat area in 1995 protests. Lodge ruled that the years later, they were degraded enough by Come to Idaho- this summer. Forest Service failed to follow any standard sediment to be listed as "water quality lim• What else can you do? Write to the the fishery has declined 90 or criteria in issuing permits to enter closed ited segments of concern" by the state of top agency officials to tell them how you areas. Instead, permits were arbitrarily [daho. feel about logging in roadless areas: the percent from historic levels. denied based on the viewpoint and affilia• This could have been avoided; road Hon. Dan Glickman, Secretary of (Oregon· League of Conservation tion of the applicant. building and logging proceeded for three Agriculture, USDA, 1400 Independence Voters) . "· Other good news is that the Idaho years before the Forest Service bothered to Ave., SW, Washington, DC 20250, and Sporting Congress, in litigation over the begin monitoring for effects on watersheds. Mike Dombeck, Chief, US Forest Service, Cove/Mallard sales since 1991, has suc• And the agency did so only because it was PO Box 96090, Washington, DC, 20090. Q) c ceeded in halting the sales until at least forced to by the National Marine Fisheries ..2, June 15, 1997. The group bargained an Service. NatalieShap iro, a forest activist, writes agreement among the Forest Service, the Under the Endangered Species Act, from Boise. 0 ...______. logging company and the road building the Forest Service is required to consult roads constructed in our National Forests ed streams, the creeks can't access their flood against cows. They take our money for farm Oregon Puts Timber cause serious harm to wildlife, especially fish. plains - instead the water races downstream subsidies and disaster relief and this-is our Ahead of Salmon Silt laden run-off from roads and timber as a "flood." In healthy streams, creekside thanks.:. no thanks! harvest sites flows into streams, filling fish vegetation helps to hold banks together, and A coalition of river users, led by the To the editor: spawning areas and causing reduced survival. slows water passing over it. Each blade of . Association of Northwest Steelheaders, has Often, stream temperatures in fish rearing grass, shrub and tree branch is a mini-obstruc• taken up. this fight for public ownership of riv• Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber's areas rise after timber harvests occur, causing tion, that collectively slows flood waters, pro• er bottoms and banks up co the ordinary high Coastal Salmon Recovery Initiative has no threatening conditions, especially for juvenile viding a chance to dissipate the erosive energy. water mark of all floacable state waters and to chance of success, not in coastal Clatsop fish. In cow-blasted streams, vegetation jg chewed that end supports House Biils 2810 and 2904. County, with the state Forestry Department Forest practices have been improved in. down, or even eliminated - in either case working at cross purposes to undermine it. the past decade, but that is no justification for water how's downstream faster, again con• Robert B. Bernstein In Clatsop County the Forestry the continued Forest Service practice of corpo• tributing to greater flooding. In a healthy Portland Department controls 154,000 acres, about 30 rate welfare. Projections of future financial stream and watershed, the soil is loose and percent of the forested land in the county. It contributions from National Forests show that easily sponges up the water. In a cow-blasted has proposed a Northwest Oregon State recreation will soon generate over $110 billion stream and watershed, compacted banks and Forests Management Plan which will increase while extractive industries such as timber har• soils cause greater over-surface flow - and Money Corrupts clearcutting by 40 percent and thinning by 25 vest, mining and grazing will generate only more water downstream. Forest Service percent in the next 10 years in Clatsop $14 billion. It is definitely time to stop subsi• Multiply each of these changes in stream County. Simultaneously the Forestry dizing activities that harm that segment of the channel health by tens of thousands of miles To the editor: Department is, once again, revising the rules National Forest that will produce future rev• of cow-blasted streams, wet meadows and so that, lest anyone have any doubt, the prima• enue. springs, and overall you have a significantly There has been much publicity lately, ry purpose (read as the sole purpose) of the Express your support for the elimination degraded landscape - one where "floods" are perhaps belatedly, on industries not paying state forest will be timber production. There is of taxpayer subsidized logging road construc• more severe. their fair share of taxes. Two measures in the no mention of the Governor's Coastal Salmon tion and an end to "corporate welfare." And who pays for increased flooding? Not Oregon Legislature attempt to reduce taxes Recovery Initiative in these rules. Contact the members of the House Budget the rancher whose cows have destroyed and again on timber harvests. Today the price of The Forest Practices Rules provide for a Committee and tell them you support a bud• degraded our rivers and streams. Not even lumber is higher than it was two yearse ago. 10-foot wide underscory vegetation buffer strip get that will end the subsidy. For a list of those who eat the beef produced by them. The price of logs is lower than it was two years (measured as the slope distance rather than members, check out www.house.gov/budget Instead, the costs are "externalized" onto the ago. Something smells. Then they buy subsi• horizontally) for fish-bearing streams. Try on the Internet or call (202) 226-7200. flood victims whose homes are inundated by diezed Forest Service timber at way below walking a 10-foot wide sloped buffer beside a "record" flows. replacement costs. It looks like they want the stream and see how much protection it pro• Marty Sherman The victims are local communities whose whole hog or none. This puts the small wood• vides. Portland taxes rise to pay for the police, and other land owners, who own 58 percent of th~ tim• It is hardly a secret that silting of spawn• emergency personnel who work overtime to berland in the U.S., in a position of having to ing grounds and sedimentation of streams assist flood victims, or to cope with the prob• sell their logs to the export market to get any• have contributed measurably to the coastal lems created by flooding. They are rate payers where near their replacement costs. This is salmon's plight. Streams formerly character• who must pay higher fees to cover the cost of not good for our country. Having said this, I ized by a complex structure of instream woody Cow-Blasted Streams repairs to electrical power facilities destroyed think chis country should put on high priority debris, multiple channels, pools, and thick A Factor in Flooding by flood waters. They are homeowners whose the repeal of the Knutson Vanderbilt law, streamside vegetation have been straightened, insurance premiums rise to cover the collec• passed in 1930 to provide funding for the riprapped, and clearcut in, around, and over. To the editor: tive losses of flood victims not so fortunate. Forest Service from the sale of timber. Money The Forestry Department's use of heavy And they are the taxpayers who must pay for corrupts. It has changed the Forest Servcie machinery for road-building and logging have This past November, voters in Oregon the repairs to highways and bridges. All of us from a guardian of our natural resources to left scars which time has not healed. Run-off rejected an initiative designed to keep cows are paying, no matter whether we supported exploitation of them. This is not good for our sediment and slope failures continue to silt the from waterways. Labeled the "clean stream" or opposed the clean stream initiative. country and causes many of our problems. coastal streams. initiative, the measure - if passed - defi• There are many wonderful people who work The Governor's Coastal Salmon nitely would have improved water quality. George Wuerthner for the Forest Service who do not believe in Recovery Initiative is doomed to failure, at What isn't readily obvious is how the measure Eugene, Oregon what they are doing, but it is their job. least in Clatsop County, unless he makes a could reduce the severity and impact of dramatic move to fire department director Jim "abundant precipitation" commonly called Fred Behm Brown, and puts the health of the fish envi• "floods." Blue River, OR ronment in state forests on the coast ahead of Cattle grazing has exacerbated the timber production. extent, severity and cost of floods throughout Big Money Mounts the West. With the heavy rainfall accompany• Environmental Assault Bhagwati P. Poddar, Ph.D. ing the recent winter storms, flooding of some extent was probably unavoidable. Plus a host Astoria, Oregon To the editor: of human actions worsen what under any cir• cumstances would be a difficult situation. Not only has Big Money mounted an More and more people are constructing homes assault on Oregon's environment, this legisla• and other structures in floodplains, increasing ture has seen several bills introduced that It's Time to Stop the likelihood of flood damage; wetlands that would curtail the public's ability to to even would otherwise absorb flood waters have Timber Subsidies access and enjoy it ... or monitor its health. Cascadia Times welcomes been drained increasing water flows, and log• Simple pleasures like anchoring your To the editor: ging of steep slopes has contributed to high letters that reflect on issues of boat, stepping on a river bed, san bar or bank overland flows and sedimentation. But what could be outlawed if citizens fail to make their There is an opportunity at this time for isn't greatly appreciated is how livestock pro• concern to the region. Please wishes known. This is similar to the fight important changes to be made in the way our duction may have intensified flood damage - which was waged to maintain the beaches of e-mail them. if at all possible. national forests are run. Currently, the House particularly in the more arid parts of the the state in public ownership, only now school of Representatives Committee on the Budget region. to [email protected]. financing commands the media's attention and is developing recommendations for the next Cattle grazing is the major cause of ripari• the public is dangerously in the dark. Or send them to us at 25-6 federal budget. Chairman John Kasich, R-OH, an damage in the arid West. Numerous studies It should not go unnoticed that one of is attempting to include wording that would have documented how continual trampling these bills, Senate Bill 1160, was introduced at Northwest 23rd Place. No. 406. eliminate the subsidy of logging road construc• and chomping by livestock on streamside veg• the request of the Oregon Farm Bureau tion on Forest Service lands. etation has degraded riparian habitat every• Portland. OR 97210. Try to Federation. These are the same folks who Presently, roads necessary for timber har• where. Yet unlike a logged over clearcut, the used the slogan, "Don't Fence Oregon," to limit them to 400 words. All c vests are either built by the Forest Service or, symptoms of a cow-blasted stream are not ::J defeat the Clean Streams Initiative, which 11) if the timber company builds the road, it is immediately obvious to most people. letters are subject to editing sought to protect streams from the degradation compensated with free trees. This practice In healthy streams, stream channels caused by unrestricted cattle grazing. They creates a deficit for the Forest Service Timber meander back and forth dissipating velocity, for space. used it like a "folksy" mantra to build opposi• Program of between $135 million and $195 reducing erosion, slowing water, giving it a tion. No fences ... ah wilderness .. ah freedom million. To make this cost worse, many of the chance to soak into the water cable. In degrad- ... ah crap folks,they just meant no fences used e Arts & l!!HUIG 8 0 0 K H E U E W Global Economy Will Cause Great Harm

By Patrice Mazza (General Agreement on Trade and PM: It strikes me that what we're seeing Patrick Mazza: Overall, what is the book Tariffs). Environmental groups have is the crystallization of a post-Cold-War one of the prime critics of about and how did it come about? been trying for a very long time to cry to activist politics that goes across the world echnology, Jerry Mander has point out some of the problems with the and really begins to deal with the big ong been swimming against Jerry Mander: We've been hearing a lot GATT - how it would devastate the issue facing us, which is globalization. eemingly overwhelming tides. about the great merits of economic glob• resource base of the world, massively uthor of Four Argumentsfor alization from the corporate leadership of increase pollution, eliminate environ• JM: That's right. To even name the main Athe Elimination of Television and In the the country and internationally, and from mental laws in all countries, deregulate threat right now as globalization is defi• Absence oftlze Sacred: The Failure of the political leaders as weir Everybody corporate activities so we would have nitely something new and unprecedent• Technology & the Survival of the Indian from Bill Clinton to John Major to very few controls on corporations, how ed. But it's got so many dimensions we Nations, Mander has been tracking and Francois Mitterand. Yet there are many the massive increase in global trade really need to learn about it. It's not critiquing the global impacts of technol• groups from a variety of perspectives - would be disastrous for the oceans. enough to say globalization is the prob• ogy for many years. economics organizations, lem. It's really necessary to start describ• Now Mander is taking on the major democracy organizations and ing its many dimensions. For example, trend of our time, the technology-driven environmental organizations, most people don't realty get a sense of 'globalization of economics and politics. consumer groups, third world The Case Against the Global Economy, and For a the effect of globalization on the quality With Edward Goldsmith, he has edited organizations, people interested Tum Toward the Local, edited by Jerry and safety of their food, what conse• The Case Against the Global Economy, and in equity, fairness and maintain• Mander and Edward Goldsmith (Sierra Club quences the move toward global corpo• For a Turn Toward the Local (Sierra Club ing jobs - a broad spectrum of Books, 1996) rations controlling the food supply is Books, 1996). Mander and Goldsmith people who have been saying beginning to have. have done an invaluable service, provid• for some time, without much The first consequence is that on the ing in one place many of the recent, key media attention, that the global econo• land small-scale farming, whether in the articles about globalization and emerging my is not the panacea it has been made PM: The historian William Appleman United States or in Africa or Asia, is re-localization alternatives. out to be, that it's going to cause great Williams spent a lot of his career docu• being wiped out by gigantic multination• These are just a few of the many harm. menting the United States' push into al corporate ownership. Where there fine articles in this collection: "Free Only Pat Buchanan has been able to global markets. So now we're at this may have been several thousand farmers Trade: The Great Destroyer," by David get any coverage on any of this. Very lit• point where a lot of the dreams of these growing diverse crops for their commu• Morris; "The Need for New tle attention is given to the face Ralph generations of global elitists have been nities and their families, you're wiping Measurements of Progress," by Ted Nader has been opposed to chis. fulfilled. Aren't we kind of tilting at out that biodiversity and food diversity Halstead and Clifford Cobb; "New Literally thousands of people have been windmills here? Do we have a snowball's and local economic self-sufficiency and Technology and the End of Jobs," by working for a long time to point out chance of really dealing with this? replanting soybeans or coffee or beef Jeremy Rifkin; "The Pressure to some of the negative effects of economic cattle for the export market, shipping it Modernize and Globalize," by Helena globalization. Yet they're all categorized JM: You're really asking, Is democracy to countries that already have enough Norberg-Hodge; "GATT, NAFTA and as small-minded protectionists. So the alive? I'm not even going to approach food. the Subversion of the Democratic point of this book was to gather a variety that question. I do know that this trend, Process," by Ralph Nader and Lori of perspectives. We have 44 articles from however, has recently been tremendous• PM: In the book you have an essay by Wallach; and "Community Money: The many points of view. ly accelerated. It's important that in a Kirk Sale, "Principles of Potential of Local Currency," by Susan democracy, to the extent we still have it, Bioregionalism." Do you see the biore• Meeker-Lowry. PM: A truly impressive list of people, that we shed as much light on this gion potentially as an organizing princi• While many books come and go, David Korten, Herman Daly, Robert process as we possibly can. Your brief ple, maybe the key organizing principle, barely making a ripple, this one is Goodland, Wendell Berry, Ralph Nader, description, of course, is exactly accu• for regearing our economies, politics and already having an impact. People are Susan Meeker-Lowry. These are some rate . It's been going towards centralized culture toward the local? · talking about it, and forming study cir• of my inspirations and you've brought corporate power for some time. But it's cles around it. And for good reason. It is them all together in one place. important that people realize that with JM: Yes. I personally do. I won't say that a panoramic, virtually comprehensive the new, giant trade agreements, we every author in the book sees it that way, examination of the most crucial issue JM: It makes a very amazing mosaic of have a really new thing happening. or everyone who's part of the facing the planet right now. Whether viewpoints, because they all come at it While it is consistent with a trend that International Forum on Globalization. you read many books, or have time for from a slightly different perspective. My began in the 1800s or perhaps earlier, it There's quite a lot of diversity in terms only a few, read this one. It is an own is as an environmentalist. That part has popped into a scale that has never of solutions. But I think there's general absolutely vital guide to our future. of the story is really left out of the existed before. agreement it needs to come down to a Following is an interview of Mander media. I got deeply involved during the Technology has an important role to logical, ecological framework. And biore• by Patrick Mazza. run-up to the vote on the GATT play in all this. Because now with' the gionalism is the most sensible, natural new technologies, global corporations are framework for how to organize resources, able to keep their multi-armed enter• economy and society. In my view that's Home is a place of refuge and comfort-or is it? We may prises everywhere on the planet in con• very workable. think of "sick buildings" as those airless offices and stant communication. Financial But right now the move now is public spaces we visit so often, but in fact, most people resources can be moved from a bank in toward globalization and that's going to live in houses full of plastics, toxic paint, and electrical London to Borneo in the hit of a key. So take us over a cliff. So if you're driving equipment that cause indoor pollution up to twenty massive centralized power by corpora• your car over a cliff, the main thing to do tions is now possible and is happening. times more toxic than pollution outdoors. Sydney and is stop the car, turn it around and find The new trade agreements elimi• another road map. There's several road Joan Baggs' The Healthy House (HarperCollins) shows how nate all controls. Even giant countries maps in the book. I'm very happy with to put an end to these health-hazardous surroundings, like the United States have no ability to bioregionalism. That's the direction I'd whether building a new house, renovating an existing control the rulings of the wro (World like things to go in. one, or even renting. Practical instructions guide readers Trade Organization) and the GKIT. We through selecting a site, choosing healthy building basically left the era of national sover• MIM!ll'i materials, working with tradespeople, and much more to eignty and have entered the era of cor• create a safe, healthy place to call home. porate sovereignty, of corporate global Patrick Mazza writesfr om Portland. A control. That new scale- makes it far longer oersion of this article is published on

Q) more serious and danger-ous for all the Wodd Wide Web at Cascadia Planet: c 2- human beings ·and the natural world. h's www.tnews.com very important that people get acquaint• ed with all this.