Support business (Downstream and up) good for our environment

I've been a member of Trout Unlimited [TU] longer than I've lived in Minnesota. Yesterday, as I was doing some tidying around the house, I took a break and started browsing through the Spring 2015 issue of Trout, TU's magazine, "when what to my wondering eyes should appear" but a story on America's Most Trout (and Salmon) Friendly Companies." I expected to find Orvis near the top of the list, and it was. I sure as hell didn't expect to find a handful of mining companies being praised by an organization whose mission is "to conserve, protect and restore North America's coldwater fisheries and their watersheds," but there they were.

• "...Tiffany [& Co] is famed among the fishes for investing millions of dollars into helping clean up abandoned mines." "When the EPA announced its decision to use its authority under the Clean Water Act to protect Bristol Bay from the Pebble Mine, Tiffany & Co. ran full-page advertisements in the Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle and Seattle Times, underscoring its support of that decision.
  "We know there will be other gold and copper mines to develop. But we will never find a more majestic and productive place than Bristol Bay."


• "Freeport-McMoRan is likely the world's largest mining company, and it has had its issues with pollution. But when Freeport's CEO, Richard Adkerson, learned of TU's work to clean up abandoned mines in the West, he and his team made a three-year commitment that will allow us [TU], for the first time to perhaps recover a native trout species that had been extirpated by historic mining in southwestern Colorado."


• "Phosphate mining companies aren't top of mind when it comes to native fish restoration, but The J.R. Simplot Company and two other phosphate-mining companies are working with TU to help recover Yellowstone cutthroat trout in the Blackfoot River in Idaho." (Not the same Blackfoot River as the one in Montana made famous in A River Runs Through It.)

St. Louis River -- majestic enough for you?

Photo by J. Harrington

Obviously, from TU's perspective, not all mines and not all mining companies are evil. I feel the same way, but I'm terribly disappointed that those involved with PolyMet, nor, as far as I can see, those who support its development, are listed by TU. That list, by the way, isn't limited to large, highly profitable companies, just as Minnesota's own Downstream Business Coalition is comprised of local small businesses who recognize that we all have a stake in and depend on an unpolluted, quality environment. I'm going to make it a point to support as many of those businesses as I can, because I too recognize that we're all in this together.

St. Louis River estuary -- Duluth harbor

Photo by J. Harrington

TU's story ends with these words "... we hope you take time to understand and appreciate how some of the rods you cast, boots you wear in the water and other things you use to catch fish, have an awful lot to do with making sure those fish are there to catch in the first place." The number of businesses that support conservation organizations is growing. It's up to those of us who care about our environment to support businesses who share our values and walk the conservation talk. If such businesses don't succeed, they can't help us conserve, protect and restore the only world we have.

On the highly unlikely chance that Governor Dayton will ever read this, or the slightly less improbable chance someone might call it to his attention, please, Governor, especially note what Tiffany & Co. wrote about Pebble Bay. Are the Boundary Waters and the St. Louis River and their watersheds any less worthy of protection? Aren't they as majestic and locally productive as Bristol Bay? If not them, then what in Minnesota would be?

Famous

By Naomi Shihab Nye 

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,   

which knew it would inherit the earth   

before anybody said so.   

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds   

watching him from the birdhouse.   

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.   

The idea you carry close to your bosom   

is famous to your bosom.   

The boot is famous to the earth,   

more famous than the dress shoe,   

which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it   

and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.   

I want to be famous to shuffling men   

who smile while crossing streets,   

sticky children in grocery lines,   

famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,   

or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,   

but because it never forgot what it could do.

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Being thankful for mining's past

The first half of this week is going to be wet, the second half -- cold. As long as "never the twain shall meet," we'll probably be doing all right, although a continuing lack of snow cover would eventually mean the ground would probably freeze even deeper than normal, unless the temperatures stay well above normal. As long as that's all clear, let's move on.

Next week is Thanksgiving. You may have noticed that I've been picking away at a list of things for which I'm grateful. One that I haven't mentioned is that I'm grateful I'm not reliant on a mining company for my pension or for future employment. Precious metal mining and coal are each looking at a tough future. Frankly, I doubt there's much that Minnesota can do, including extending unemployment benefits for miners or burdening homeowners with increased electricity costs to save dollars for mining companies that somehow manage to always pay their executives bonuses, but our elected leaders keep trying. I suppose I should be grateful that it's not worse, but I keep remembering the old saying about if you're trying to get out of a hole, the first thing to do is to stop digging. Mining in Minnesota has become marginal, at best. I hope Governor Dayton takes into consideration the kind of information in this assessment, from which the chart above was taken, and a fundamental incompatibility between mining's impacts and the  environmental quality associated with long term growth prospects for northern Minnesota. Despite prior proposals such as some posted here, of a possible role for Minnesota helping to create a "sustainable mining industry," I'm starting to conclude that northern Minnesota can have mining or it can have a future, but it can't have both. The "my way or the highway" attitude exhibited by many of mining's supporters is a major hindrance to a creative future, it seems to me. Northern Minnesota faces a tipping point regarding its future. I for one will be grateful if Governor Dayton recognizes that and makes an appropriate decision, one that looks forward, not back.

Nocturne

By Li-Young Lee 

That scraping of iron on iron when the wind   

rises, what is it? Something the wind won’t   

quit with, but drags back and forth.

Sometimes faint, far, then suddenly, close, just   

beyond the screened door, as if someone there   

squats in the dark honing his wares against   

my threshold. Half steel wire, half metal wing,   

nothing and anything might make this noise   

of saws and rasps, a creaking and groaning

of bone-growth, or body-death, marriages of rust,   

or ore abraded. Tonight, something bows

that should not bend. Something stiffens that should   

slide. Something, loose and not right,   

rakes or forges itself all night. 

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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.