by Hannah Gimpel, Hamilton
I am writing in response to the Star’s reporting that U.S. Critical Materials’ intends to submit another, “scaled back” plan of operations for a rare earth element mine at Sheep Creek, the headwaters of the West Fork of the Bitterroot River. The USCM spokesperson, Scott Osterman said, “…they hope to have a new proposal together by April 22.”
It is hard to miss the irony, that a company that has repeatedly claimed to value local input and to take conservation concerns seriously has chosen Earth Day as their arbitrary deadline for submitting a new plan that would still wreak havoc on natural resources.
Sheep Creek may seem like some far off, unimportant place to the ones who want to see this mine through, but for those of us who live here, the headwaters of the Bitterroot are a defining part of our valley’s ecological health, recreation, and identity. For a lot of us in the Bitterroot, stewardship is not symbolic, it is a lived responsibility. So the idea of an out of state mining company proposing industrial development of a polluting mine in such a sensitive area is nothing to take lightly, and doing so on Earth Day only compounds their misunderstanding of this place. Add that to their apparent desire to sidestep robust public involvement and it only confirms my suspicions that they don’t have our best or even basic interests in mind.
If U.S. Critical Materials does anything on Earth Day, it shouldn’t be submitting another plan of operations. Instead they should be engaging meaningfully with the community its spokesperson claims they value. That means creating real opportunities for people to shape decisions that affect them before those decisions are made, not after they’ve already been set in motion.
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