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Posted by D Sherman [72.47.9.228] on Friday, May 13, 2011 at 11:25:37 :
In Reply to: Re: Off-topic Question about the economy... posted by Ken Sterrett [75.220.222.182] on Friday, May 13, 2011 at 08:49:42 :
Yeah, that's all the jobs there are here in the "new economy" that the experts said was supposed to replace mining. 30 years ago when all the mines shut down, tourism was supposed to take its place. They built the gondola in Kellogg with depressed-area economic-development money (and gave it to a private company). Then there were all the EPA superfund cleanup jobs, mostly moving dirt from one pile to another. Everybody thought it was a waste of time and money, but it was government money, and they paid Davis-Bacon wages.
But then a funny thing happened -- not all the nasty old mines closed down after all. Despite the best efforts by the EPA to close them, such as requiring that the water that runs out of the settling ponds have less zinc in it than the water that's in the river upstream of the mine, a few of the mines are still going, and a good miner can make $40-$50/hr. The conspiracy theorists claim that the people who secretly run the world have a big map where they've marked out North Idaho as a giant nature preserve, and their long-term goal is to force everyone to move away. Sometimes it seems like that's true, between shutting down the mining and logging, blocking most of the Forest Service roads, banning new houses in many areas, ending the patenting of mining claims, setting up a "superfund" site that's promised to stay for at least 100 years, and bringing in Canadian wolves. The bright spot is that the price of metals is way up and there's still lots of ore in the ground here, if the government will just let the miners mine it.