street roots
11
Aug. 16, 2013
A wasted opportunity in Montana
BY MIKE WOLD
The epiphany might have occurred on
Tyer’s final float trip with his father. But Tyer
ontana might be one place in the
remembers only three things from the trip.
Lower 48 where you wouldn’t
The first is the weevils in the instant soup
expect pollution problems. Its
Bob brought for lunch the first day. The
image, fostered by ads around the country,
is is an argument about nuclear power,
second
of an outdoor paradise. Unfortunately,
of which Tyer says, “It was just a handy
Montana is also home to the largest
divide to disagree across.” The third is that
Superfund site in the country, the legacy of
because “Bob had neglected to bring a map,”
decades of uncontrolled mining.
he pushed them faster than they needed to
A central problem of our industrial
go, and they “spent six hours huddled out of
civilization is the disposal of waste.
the wind, waiting for our ride to show up.”
Opportunity, Mont., is the poster child for
Tyer was 27 at the time but, judging from
that problem. Located just outside of
his story, he was still thinking like a teenager
Anaconda on the Clark Fork of the Columbia
who expects the adult to take care of him:
River, Opportunity grew up around a smelter
He doesn’t write, “We both forgot to bring a
that rendered various kinds of ores — copper,
map,” for example. Seventeen years later, he
manganese, zinc and phosphates — from
deafly feels guilt, but not forgiveness — for
surrounding mines while generating acres of
his father or himself.
tailings and wastewater. The tailings, or
As far as what happened to Opportunity,
leach residue, had high concentrations of
the narrative is hurt by Tyer’s unwillingness
heavy metals, including arsenic, often used
to commit himself to outrage. Outrage is the
as fill for driveways and streets around town.
only reasonable response to the story, and
The smelter itself produced arsenic dust
it’s clear that Tyer himself feels that. Yet, at
that settled into people’s yards; the paint
least half a dozen times, he essentially writes
used by the company (appropriated by
that, given industrial civilization, given our
employees and used all over the town) had
need for the minerals that came out of the
an 8 percent lead content. Drums of
ground here, there had to be a waste dump
carcinogenic chemicals were buried without
somewhere.
documentation and dug up at»random years
In a similar vein, he writes, “As crimes go,
later. Floods deposited contaminated soils
the cleanup of the Clark Fork ... and the
downstream, leaving acres along the river
sacrifice of Opportunity belong firmly in the
where nothing grows. More recently, the
category of First World Problems.” He recalls
Environmental Protection Agency, as it
describing his story to a reporter in Russia
cleaned up other contaminated sites in the
whose closest colleagues had been
watershed, decided that the Opportunity
murdered. “She said, of my country, ‘You are
smelter site was the best place to dispose of
so far ahead of us.’”
contaminated soils because the soils there
Early deaths from cancer, poisoned earth
were already too contaminated to clean up.
and ongoing arsenic dust should not be
As often happens, it’s hard to prove that
trivialized by the fact that the people in the
people’s health has been affected by all the
town have some access to relief through the
pollution around them. However, as Brad
political process. Nor are the deaths excused
Tyer puts it in “Opportunity, Montana:” “One
by the fact that many of the workers still
old-school environmentalist friend ...
living in the town were themselves complicit
responds to the question with a directive to
in the degradation of their own health.
Tyer is an accomplished writer. But his
‘just take a walk through the Anaconda
ambivalence about what happened to
Safeway.’ The preponderance of palsied
Opportunity seems to cause him to circle his
shuffles is all the evidence he needs.”
subject throughout the book, giving it a
Tyer is at his best when he focuses on
degree of repetitiousness that sometimes
Opportunity, its history and the people
annoys. This actually does seem related to
there, and the broader story of copper
his unresolved feelings about his father: “I
mining in the area. However, he structures
the book as a personal memoir. Hanging over learned from Bob how to be disappointed,
and how to parse imperfection.... There’s a
his narrative is his bitterness about his
voice in my head that sounds like his. It says
relationship with his father, whom he calls
that Opportunity’s story isn’t even worth
“Bob.”
telling.”
The idea sounds promising - work out
The story was worth telling. If Tyer could
your issues about your father while working
have shut off that voice, it would have been a
out your issues about industrial civilization -
better story.
but the result doesn’t gel. One might expect
some kind of epiphany about the father, or
Reprinted from Real Change News, Seattle,
the narrator, or the relation between the
Wash.
two; one might expect that epiphany to give
some insight into the larger issue.
C O N T R IB U T IN G W R IT E R
M
Opportunity,
Montana: Big
Copper, Bad
water, and the
burial of an
American
Landscape By
Brad Tyer
You
By Shannon Andrews
You are the brightness of my heart
You make the sun shine on the dreariest
days
You move the mountains
And you crash like the ocean waves
You are my hope
You are my static
You are my best friend
You taught me how to love
You are you
That makes the best of you
Breakthrough
By Ron Sanford
It’s my own very unique project
No meter, no structure involved
I choose the subject and prompt
Writing about nature and such.
Leave it to the breeze
The facets, methods, devices nothing
new,
Lest I should think on edge of a
breakthrough.
Multitudinous waves ebb and flow
Past the perimeter once imagined
There are no bounds or limits
To the creative genius of the human
mind.
Music music music called universal
Let’s make another set of rules to break.
woman
works.
So does
Street
Roots.