Last night I had the enlightening opportunity to visit with my good friend, sometimes mentor and sometimes antagonist, Al the Pal from Hamilton.
Regular readers of our blog know that Al has spent his life running a family ranch in the Bitterroot Valley and that he’s a diehard fly fisherman with a good sense of humor and a great command of the waters in the southwestern part of the state. We forgive him his occasional stabs at Bozeman; from the viewpoint of a multi-generation Montana rancher, I suppose we do have a fair number of manicured, trust-funded carpet baggers living in the neighborhood, whom Al supposes all spend the day sipping lattes and ‘eating cupcakes’. He’s correct in noting that ‘workin’ the ranch they ain’t’.
Al is also a successful entrepreneur; Al says that even though the term has been sullied by those who take a more collectivist view of life and society, he actually likes being called a capitalist if that means one believes mightily in individual freedoms and takes their individual responsibility to be a contributor to society and provide for their family seriously. Most days I call his views damned refreshing, and while folks just don’t talk like that anymore, it’s readily apparent that Al truly believes it.
But I digress.
Al reminded me that the Missoulian, in his description ‘Missoula’s principle newspaper and endless regurgitator of news from the hard left end of the spectrum’ has been running a three part series on the Clark Fork cleanup. He noted a couple of interesting points in our discussion.
First, most folks don’t realize that the upper Clark Fork is the largest federal Superfund cleanup project in the US in terms of geographical scope – we’re talking 120 miles of river from its headwaters down to the site of the old Milltown dam.
Second, much of the actual damage was induced by a catastrophic flood in the river system 101 years ago which dumped hundreds of thousands of tons of toxic crap into the system. As we discussed bits and pieces of the story last night our conversation drifted to pondering what a 100 year or 500 year flood would do to Pebble or countless other similar constructs around the world.
For the record, Al notes that here in Montana the extraction industries have been and continue to be a critical part of the state’s economic engine, and that mining science has changed dramatically since the great Clark Fork flood of 1908. We agreed that it’s hard not to look a river like the Clark Fork without a flood of emotions, including some anger and resentment at delays in cleaning the damned mess up.
I don’t know how long the links below will be good, but here are the three pieces of the Missoulian story published Saturday, Sunday, and Monday of this past week,. There are some interesting pics included on the newspaper’s site; they’ve have a particularly onerous policy in terms of sharing content, so none are provided for your review here.
Part 1 - Restoration river: Work to begin soon on cleaning Upper Clark Fork
Part 2 - Restoration river: Some Landowners coming around on Upper Clark Fork repairs.
Part 3 – Restoration river: Unlocking Upper Clark Fork’s potential for recreation, wildlife.
Butte’s Berkeley Pit photo via NASA
Tags: River - Clark Fork
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