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By PAT WILLIAMS
Senior fellow and regional policy associate
O'Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain West
Y esterday's
scars on the western landscape are tomorrow's pay dirt.
Thousands of acres of abandoned mines, tens of thousands of miles of rutted
timber roads, antiquated century-old dams, tainted soils and waters –
these and other legacies of our resource extractive past offer us economic
opportunities galore. Using the job skills of yesterday and tomorrow,
the economy of Montana and the Rocky Mountains can flourish through the
revitalization of our scarred landscape: mountains of pay dirt.
Although restoration work has begun, it is making only a small dent in
the West's enormous toxic backlog.
Here in Montana, important cleanup continues along the Clark Fork River
Basin from Butte to Idaho, including the beginning of the removal of the
Milltown Dam and the hundreds of tons of toxic sediment lodged behind
it.
In other Western states, a few truly innovative restoration efforts are
either under way – as in New Mexico, Colorado and Utah – or
under consideration as along the Klamath River to our West. Those and
other pieces of important work are ongoing but it is not enough.
At our current snail's pace, landscape restoration will take centuries
to complete, and in the meantime problems will worsen due to erosion,
landslides, toxic drainage, cost inflation and a host of other difficulties
which, tragically, include the damage still being perpetrated by the occasional
rogue, runaway extractive company.
The revitalization of our landscape and communities requires public support
and encouragement. These lands and waterways are our responsibility. Much
of the work is and will be accomplished with private dollars through the
mechanism known as Stewardship Contracts – a process which results
from legislation I first introduced in the U.S. Congress 20 years ago.
Those contracts trade goods for service – timber companies cut trees
and some of the proceeds pay for restoration work. As useful as those
contracts are, they are insufficient to pay the full cost of restoration.
In Montana, companies such as Atlantic Richfield and British Petroleum
have had deep superfund liability pockets but even those pockets have
a bottom.
We, the public, must show a new willingness to invest in our land, water
and communities. But, first, we need to understand the potential, the
value, of restoration. We must see it for what it is – an environmental
industry, with good pay and benefits.
Perhaps we should think of it as we do other industries. Mining has an
association as does timber, construction and housing development. They
have trade shows, titles, slogans and data to prove their worth. The restoration
business has none of those. The public would understand restoration better
if it had an identifiable center, a presence. Restoration needs a brand.
Appropriate repair of the land and the restitching of our rivers requires
a new paradigm of public consideration. We westerners need to re-imagine
ourselves on this landscape.
And we need to insist that our elected representatives shake off timidity
– as Montana's Gov. Brian Schweitzer did by convening the
recent Restoration Forum in Billings in which he brought together business,
labor, and environmentalists toward a common goal.
Both public and private leadership are essential in the effort
to revitalize both the environment and the economy of Montana and the
Rocky Mountain West.
Pat Williams served nine terms as a U.S. Representative
from Montana. After his retirement, he returned to Montana and is teaching
at The University of Montana where he also serves as a Senior Fellow at
the Center for the Rocky Mountain West.
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