The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
By Jonathon Naylor Well they should be!' the voice on the other end of the phone informed me. Such outbursts were typical of 'Larry' the out-of-town environmentalist who used to carpet-bomb my inbox with over-the-top e-mails. This was back when the Hudbay copper smelter was still running, and Larry, was its biggest critic. Larry would read about how the smelter spewed out loads of mercury and then send me links to every article he could find about how mercury, in sufficient doses, will harm human health. He would do the same for lead, cadmium, arsenic, sulphur dioxide and all the other terrible stuff that used to rain down upon us in the form of invisible particles. Some of the articles appeared to be from reputable sources; others were blogs or environmentalist websites prone to taking data, and risk, completely out of context. On this particular day, Larry called to ask me how Flin Flonners feel about living in the shadow of a colossal polluter. I told Larry that, yes, there are certainly some concerns. I told him that residents' willingness to breathe in toxins was waning and that the smelter was probably on its last legs. But, I continued, Flin Flonners weren't generally alarmists about it like, well, Larry. That prompted his 'They should be!' rebuttal. The conversation ended shortly thereafter, cordially I might add, but I haven't spoken with Larry since. I can appreciate where people like Larry are coming from. I'm sure if I had grown up outside of Flin Flon, I would have seen all of the media reports on our smelter pollution and wondered how anyone could put up with it. Society needs people like Larry, as irrational as they can be, to prevent the rest of us from becoming complacent on issues concerning our environment and health. I thought about Larry as I recently wrote about the Manitoba environmentalists now opposing the Reed Mine between Snow Lake and Flin Flon. The Wilderness Committee argues the planned copper mine, already well into development, will destroy provincial park land and interfere with caribou migration. 'It's a park. I thought parks were the one place we could escape mining and find solace in undisturbed nature,' Eric Reder, Manitoba campaign director for the group, said in a news release. 'This mine is a slap in the face of all Manitobans who, like me, value protecting wilderness.' Reed Mine sits within the Grass River Provincial Park. It is situated near the edge of Reed Lake in what the Wilderness Committee calls 'a crucial travel corridor for endangered woodland caribou.' 'The surrounding forest has been protected from logging for decades in an effort to preserve caribou,' the group said in a news release. 'This mine project would threaten a caribou range listed as 'high risk' by the Manitoba government.' Just like the links Larry used to send me, I am sure there is at least some truth to the concerns over Reed Mine. But no one ever said mining is an impact-free activity. It has many impacts, of course, but for most of us those impacts are offset by the economic rewards. By 2010, when the copper smelter closed, our society had largely said it was no longer willing to put up with mass pollution near a population centre in exchange for some economic benefit. But we are, by and large, still willing to put up with some downed trees and possible (though debatable) caribou disruption. And so the Reed Mine advances. Look, no mining company should be left alone to do whatever it wants to the environment. But no group of environmentalists should be able to stand in the way of a mining development when the population as a whole just isn't on their side. It's about striking the right balance. In the view of both Hudbay and the NDP government, hardly cigar-chomping big-business types, Reed Mine strikes that balance. I happen to agree with them. Local Angle runs Fridays.
