4/18/2002 Extra: We all live downstream

[Torrere]

<img src="http://koby.atypedigital.com/rcm/ds2.jpg" />

Here are a couple of protestors, kayaking and floating a sign that reads "<small>WE ALL LIVE DOWNSTREAM</small>".

What are they protesting? Well, since 1987 ASARCO has been trying to get permission to build a copper/silver mine at Noxon, Montana. It's about 25 miles upriver from Lake Pend Oreille, where these kayakers are accompanying a protest march.

The problem is that ASARCO plans to deal with the tailings (mining waste) by dumping 3 million gallons per day into the Clark Fork River, and permanently leaving 100 million tons of of waste 1/4 mile from the river. The methods they would use to safeguard it are untested and seem unlikely to work well in this situation. It is projected that the tailings would leak a minimum of 29,000 gallons of contaminants into the groundwater, daily.

Naturally, this makes a bunch of people rather leery, and thus the protest march.

<img src="http://koby.atypedigital.com/rcm/14b.jpg" />

It gets worse. ASARCO (which has a bad reputation, responsible for creating 1/3 of Superfund mining cleanup sites) has sold the Rock Creek Mine area to Sterling (with an even worse reputation). The founder of Sterling left his previous company after charges were pressed against him by the S.E.C. -- and that company (which he co-founded) has yet another bad reputation, because it went bankrupt in '98 and left taxpayers with "tens of millions of dollars" in cleanup bills.