One Round River by Richard Manning, Henry Holt, $25, ISBN
0805047921
YOU can almost inhale the living landscape of western Montana from Richard
Manning鈥檚 lyrical polemic against plans for a proposed huge opencast gold mine
poised to devastate the headwaters of the Blackfoot River, near Lincoln.
Manning knows as much about the business and social realities of the
area as about its ecology and history, made famous by the film A River Runs
Through It. Some years ago, his investigations into corporate
logging鈥斺�漷imber mining鈥� so heavy that it can make hills
collapse鈥攃ost him his job of 15 years at a local newspaper.
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Woven through with interviews and beautiful nature-writing, he sketches the
scarcely regulated web of corporations, federal and state land management
agencies, long-time ranchers and, last but not least, the 鈥渃appuccino cowboys鈥�
who buy up the greenbelt between the strip malls and five-lane highways of the
valleys and let their horses overgraze the land into 鈥渉ammerdirt squares鈥�.
The early part of the book is an impassioned history of the region鈥檚
exploitation, from the native Salish people and explorers Meriwether Lewis and
William Clark, the railroad companies that began the logging and the cattle
herds that have for more than a hundred years turned river banks into
鈥渉oof-churned quagmires鈥� and make the fields 鈥渁s hard and barren as parking
濒辞迟蝉鈥�.
But mining is the greatest danger. Manning describes the 鈥渟lickens鈥� and toxic
heaps left by the huge Berkeley pit on the nearby Clark Fork River. It once
provided a third of America鈥檚 copper and has left aquifers laced with arsenic,
sulphates, copper, zinc, cadmium and manganese. From the rock piles of the
proposed Blackfoot mine, landscape architect Lee Anderson may intend to
鈥渃o-create with nature鈥� an 鈥渆arth sculpture鈥�, but Manning delves into the
environmental implications of a hole more than 2 square kilometres and more than
400 metres deep, and the impact of leaching gold from low-grade ore using highly
toxic sodium cyanide, leaving a dirt mountain contaminated by acid and heavy
metals.
It鈥檚 convincing stuff, undercutting the nostalgia of Norman Maclean鈥檚 famous
novella and Robert Redford鈥檚 film鈥攚hich had to be shot elsewhere because
of Montana鈥檚 deforestation. Manning has a clear and urgent voice. Will it be
heard in high places?