Who will benefit from all this mining?

Your July 23 editorial regarding the need for gravel to be mined in our backyards seems pretty self-righteous to me (“Gravel needs must be met in our backyard”). Tell me, is it your backyard they will be mining? Is it your daily commute that will be disrupted, your car windshield that will be broken, your peace and quiet that will be enhanced by the sweet sounds of blasting?

Who is to benefit from this mining anyway? Surely not the salmon and bull trout (endangered species) in the Sultan river whose waters will be polluted from oil and gasoline runoff from all the machinery and equipment – fish which are incidentally protected by laws and the treaty rights of Native Americans. Not the citizens of Sultan, whose escape timeframe from a dam failure may well be shortened by turning the land above the town into a Swiss cheese. Surely not the citizens of Everett who may well not realize the risks posed by allowing blasting and mining in the area of their municipal watershed. Surely not the towns and cities along Highway 2 that will have to contend with increased traffic fatalities, road deterioration and gridlock on an already antiquated road whose repair is not even in the proposed transportation package.

We need gravel, you say – well, the last time I looked there was plenty of it in Eastern Washington and a convenient railroad track to haul it. Whining that shipping will drive up the costs of doing business does not impress me. I am in business and my costs rise, too. Should individual families suffer so that gravel companies can make money? Oh, I forget, you have already said it’s OK for citizens to suffer, as long as it isn’t you.

Let’s be truthful here, the people who benefit from mining gravel are the businesses who sell gravel and they want it cheap. All they care about is their profit margin. Some gravel companies aren’t even American owned. The public servants who want to allow mining the land for gravel (the Department of Natural Resources) don’t even own the land. The public has the right to decide about how much they are willing to allow their future to be shaped. And if the citizens in the affected areas are objecting to this increasing pressure to sell out to big business, that’s their right.

Lastly, the bribes you suggest that the towns settle for are also a laugh – a ball field for 30 years of gridlock and misery. Some trade. Are you offering beads, too?

Sultan

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