Brad Tyer - Opportunity, Montana

Early on in Brad Tyer's book about the town of Opportunity he makes a telling point about the brochures that advertise the tourist mecca of Montana. It is supposed to be an "otherworldly landscape filled with bears and wolves", but both those species and the iconic bison only survive because of direct and regular human intervention. Bison, for instance, are preserved mostly because they are good for eating. The point Tyer is making, is that Montana's nature is not natural, but an artifical construct.

The same is true of many of the rivers. Tyer is a canoeist. He relates to the landscape through the waterways he travels, and Montana's waterways have always been famous. Think of the flyfishing of the film (and story) A River Runs Through It. The film was made far away from the actual location, because that's not natural enough - too many industrial buildings and homes. The story ignores these too. But Montana's rivers have also had an important role in creating the United States. On them steamboats ferried the Seventh Cavalry to their ill-fated meeting with Sitting Bull's forces and, more importantly for the environment, boats moved the copper ore and mining materials in and out of the state. Some of the mineowners might have needed ships to bring in their profits.

The mines have also become repositories for pollution - heavy metals like arsenic and lead, and the muck that falls from the skies. Montana's mines made America, particularly the mines of Anaconda and Butte. But the poisonous waste had to go somewhere, and its ended up in tailings ponds and barely beneath the ground in what has become one of America's largest polluted areas - a superfund site that sucks in millions of dollars to create what is supposed to be a safe environment.

Opportunity is a tiny town, just outside Anaconda. It has become the tragic dumping ground for the legacy of nearly 100 years of copper mining. The people there have various diseases - likely caused by the pollution. There's been a campaign, on and off, by various people to clean it up. But many of the residents, tired of fighting, or worried about their pensions, aren't fighting back. Opportunity, Montana has become the dumping ground in order to preserve the wealthier and more tourist friendly parts of the state.

The Clark Fork River is supposedly being restored to it's "natural sate", but the millions of tons of toxic soil has to go somewhere. And like poor, working class towns from South America to China, Opportunity was chosen. It barely even got mentioned in the presentations about the work. 

Part personal memoir, part traveloge, Brad Tyer's book is an unusual look at the consequences of big business being allowed to get away with murder. The big mining companies made billions in profits, yet have been made to give a tiny percentage back to the communities they ravaged. They were happy to suck the life out of their workers' and kill the very earth around the state, yet they're barely accountable for the horror they unleashed.

Tyer's a great writer, and a decent journalist. He's good with people, and his interviews with locals, industry insiders and environmentalists are fascinating. He's a touch to cynical though - perhaps because he's seen it all go to hell before. I'd like to think we can make the bastards pay. Still, this is a great book for opening the curtain on the real Montana, which I finished a few short hours before flying there to see Butte, Anaconda and the rest.

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