By Jim Fisher
One day late in J 98 J, the last president of The Bunker Hill Co. held a rare news conference at company headquarters in Kellogg to discuss Bunker Hill's selllement of a lead-poisoning lawsuit against it and the pending shutdown of its mine and smelting complex. One of the least significant questions asked of Jack Kendrick Was what would become of the huge smokestacks that had distributed smelter pollution Over a wider area since they were erected only four years earlier.
They would probably have to come down, Kendrick said.
And when they did, he added, that Would be the end of "monuments to environmental insanity."
Today, the stacks-monuments to a different kind of environmental insanity than Kendrick meant-become history.
I don't know how many people I will rub shoulders with to watch the most dramatic step in the current Superfund cleanup of the Bunker Hill site, but I know enough about Shoshone County to be certain it will be more than a few. People there don't need much excuse for a party, and the "Blowing Our Stacks" bash they have planned for today should be a doozy.
But for most, I suspect, it will be a billersweet affair.
By now, nearly everyone is eager to be rid of Bunker Hill's contaminated legacy, and probably any other reminders of how a distant corporation can plunder and abandon a community by remote control. But included among the crowd will be many people who spent their working lives at the mine, the lead smelter or the zinc plant. And when the stacks disappear into dust, part of them will too.
Although Bunker Hill provided the life blood for the company town from the legendary discovery of the mine by Noah Kellogg's jackass, the company's latesl years were hardly covered wilh glory. Taken over by lhe HOUslon wheeler-dealers al Gulf Resources and Chemical Corp., "Uncle Bunker" became the kind of outfit that would deliberalely poison its workers and neighbors rather than shul down afler ils Pollulion-collecting baghouse burned in late 1973. And Wilh the kind of managemenllhat Would build lall slacks lo spread lOxic chemicals like lead Over a wider area rather than cOOlain lhem in 1977.
The slacks lhal come down today should never have been built. Dilulion is not lhe SolUlion to pollution. And under normal procedures, and environmental regulations, they never Would have been built.
BUl former Idaho Sen. James McClure saw to it that they were built anyway, under extraordinary procedures. McClure attached to federal legislalion a special dispensation for the Bunker Hill smelter, allowing illo shoot ils pollutants up huge stacks rather than to remove them from its discharges.
McClure might have honestly thoughl at the time he was ensuring the smelter's future, but he was really sealing its doom. Bunker Hill was enabled to avoid installing lhe costly pollution-control equipment that Asarco added atlhe time to ils smelleral Easl Helena, Mont. BUllhal only boughllime for Gulf Resources to take what bOOlY it could get from lhe smelter during lhe nexl few years and lhen abandon it. Meanwhile, Easl Helena kept operating, as il does today.
This is a more complele version of lhe Bunker Hill story 'lhan I was familiar wilh when I moved away from the Silver Valley in 1982. As editorofthe Kellogg Evening News, I knew the aflernoon lhe Bunker Hill ShUldown was announced lhal my OWn days in lhe area were numbered. BUl I did not know how cynically the people of Kellogg had been treated by the likes of Robert H. Allen, CEO of Gulf Re1!ources and Mexican money launderer for lhe J 972 Richard Nixon re-election campaign.
Only later Would dOcumeOls from the lead-poisoning lawSUil be released, revealing how Gulf Resources direclors had coldly balanced lhe cost of paying for poisoning children againsl the cost of ShUlling down their Kel/ogg smelter. before
deciding to keep it running Wilhout a baghouse.
"EI Paso-200 children_$5 to $10,000 per kid," Vice President Frank Woodruff jOlled down al lhe time. And he followed thal Wilh a calculation that liabilily for poisoning 500 Kel/ogg children could lOlal $6 million lo $7 million.
The calculations were based on a 1970 lead"poisoning incidenl at an Asarco lead smelter in EI Paso, Texas.
Allhough $6 million lo $7 million mighl Sound like a huge liability for a business lo take On VolUOlarily, lead prices were soaring at the time, and Bunker Hill's profits for the following year reached $25.9 million.
The lallesl of lhe four stacks that demolition experts will bring down at Kellogg today is the tallest one ever felled on lhis cOOlineOl, 7 J 5 feet high. That's a big monument, aIl right-a monument lo moral depravity as weIl as to environmental insanity.
Jim Fisher is a Tribune columnist and editorial writer.
Lewiston Tribune May 26, 1996
September - October 1996 TRANSITIONS 21
No comments:
Post a Comment