REGULATE: Don't compromise health

I really appreciated the business journal edition on “Mineufacturing.” However I must hope for caution.

The general boo hoo tone how the government has become an impediment to any economic success of this region or the Silver Valley is overstated. These more often than not are permits to mine on public lands, not just private. And another EPA Superfund lead cleanup at the public’s expense has been the unregulated result before so why would today be any different? Isn’t that lead still at the Lake Coeur d’Alene bottom? Isn’t there still a general warning not to eat too many (or any) fish caught in the Spokane River?

Look, I grew up here and remember very well the brown hills surrounding Smelterville near Kellogg and abandoned houses in the Burke Canyon. In Burke, indoor plumbing often meant a cantilevered box with a toilet seat on it in a backroom hanging over the creek.

We also have Superfund cleanups in northwest Montana for asbestos and all the windfall cash settlements from Hanford near Tri Cities, Wash., for anyone who got cancer there.

Turning any “mineufacturing” endeavor loose and hoping for the best is foolishness.

MIKE RENO

Post Falls