Help needed to keep region safe, healthy

It’s big, that’s why your help is needed, residents and friends of Montana. We must protect our water and protect our wildlife. Revett Mining wants to tunnel under the Cabinet Mountain Wilderness area in northwestern Montana.

The proposed project is bad from all angles. The grizzly bears and bull trout are two threatened species living with Revett Mining’s proposed damage zone. Below the proposed mine is the Clark Fork River, which was turned into one of our country’s worst toxic polluted rivers. The Butte and Anaconda mines were the worst polluters, dumping toxic waste into it for more than 130 years. Making awful worse was construction of the dams, which held the heaviest toxic waste behind them.

The proposed mine would dump 3 million gallons of toxic waste daily into the Clark Fork River between two dams. The toxic goop holding pond would leak into the river below it. Is it the mining industry’s goal to kill all life left in the Clark Fork River? Nothing should be built above an obvious fault zone visible from the highway. Our water’s health can’t be at the mercy of an outdated 1872 mining law and wilderness act.

When will our country put our health above wrong ways to make money? Kids are worth clean water. Don’t destroy tourist interest, don’t slaughter valley wildlife with a 200-percent increase in never-stopping traffic, don’t put the health of Lake Pend Oreille at extreme risk. Don’t harm what has much more value, protect it. The river’s history of abuse has earned it retirement. The mining industry has asked enough of the Clark Fork River.

L.J. LaBELLE

Noxon, Mont.