To Clean or Not to Clean

Bitterroot Valley of Montana currently is facing an issue of contamination, while there are many rising issues the main one in found in toxic wastes. In the past, and still in the present, miners have been removing ore concentrate from Montana mines with little concern for the state that they leave the land in. When one is removing metal, such as copper, lead, molybdenum, palladium, platinum, zinc, gold and silver, from the land and making money doing so it becomes important to make sure to spend as little money as possible. By following this moto, same as all business men do, the mines within Montana left behind toxic waste within the tailings in the form of copper, arsenic, cadmium and zinc. Now people of Montana are being forced to not only try and clean up the past messes that were left abandoned but work to keep mines that are currently processing yardage from making new messes of their own and not completing a full clean up.

I think that the Bitterroot Valley is in fact a fantastic place to look to if one is trying to understand an over all look of the world’s environmental issues. Montana and Bitterroot Valley show the struggle between the business making money, and then refusing to spend it on the local land, and the people wanting their land cleaned but refusing to pay taxes to make such a thing happen. I think this because any where you go in the world is going to have a similar formula. It is the nature of business to spend as little money as possible while making profit and the nature of tax payers to want more than they are willing to pay for unless it will affect them eminently and in the near future.

1 thought on “To Clean or Not to Clean”

  1. Hi Rachael!

    I think you had a really good point in your second paragraph about the nature of the problem being at the monetary level. I disagreed with Montana being a good model for the world’s environmental problems that are being faced today in my post, but I did not even think about the business side of it all. I think you had a really good point with the idea that many people agree, what is happening to our landscapes is bad, but no one wants to pay the money or take responsibility to fix it. Globally, this is a common pattern. One that needs to be changed if anything is going to be dealt with appropriately. Good perspective!

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