When everybody wins does the environment lose? The environmental techno-fix in twentieth-century American mining

The Technological Fix: How People Use Technology to Create and Solve Problems

Volumn , Issue , 2004, Pages 117-132

  Lecain, Timothy J ^a  

^a MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 84909639792     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: 10.4324/9780203501351     Document Type: Chapter

References (38)

1. For urban pollutants, Joel Tarr observes similar patterns in his pathbreaking work, The Searchfor the Ultimate Sink: Urban Pollution in Historical Perspective (Akron, OH: University of Akron Press, 1996).
2. J.R.McNeil, Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World (New York: W.W.Norton & Company, Inc, 2000): 50-147. Despite theseexamples of progress on some types of environmental problems, however, McNeil's overallview of what he identifies as a "gigantic, uncontrolled experiment on the earth" is far fromsanguine.
3. By contrast, the controversial work of the Danish political scientist Bjorn Lomborgin The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World (Boston:Cambridge University Press, 2001) uses statistical analysis of similar data to conclude thatthe state of the global environment has dramatically improved in recent years and thatenvironmentalists have exaggerated current ecological threats. However, the Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty recently concluded Lomborg's work demonstrated"systematic one-sidedness" and was "contrary to the standards of good scientific practice."
4. Charles H.Fulton, Metallurgical Smoke (Washington, DC: Bureau of Mines, 1915), 83-84;
5. Robert E.Swain, "Smoke and Fume Investigations, " Industrial and Engineering Chemistry 41 (1949): 2385.
6. M.L.Quinn, "Industry and Environment in the Appalachian Copper Basin, 1890-1930, " Technology and Culture 34 (1993): 575-612, quote on 611.
7. Fulton, Metallurgical Smoke, 83-84, notes that at least some damage to farm lands continued to occur since mine ownersin 1913 paid $16, 500 in compensation to area farmers. Smelter operators also cut backproduction during active crop-growing seasons in order to reduce harmful emissions.
8. McNeil, Something New, 22-26.
9. McNeil, Something New, 136-137.
10. Quoted in, Quinn, "Industry and Environment, " 592.
11. See, for example, Fulton, Metallurgical Smoke, where much of this knowledge was latercollected and published.
12. Robert George Raymer, A History of Copper Mining in Montana (Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1930), 67;
13. Mac Millan, "A History of the Struggle to Abate Air Pollution From Copper Smelters of the Far West, 1885-1933" (Ph.D. diss., University of Montana, 1973), 107-108.
14. Gordon Morris Bakken, "Was There Arsenic in the Air? Anaconda Versus the Farmers of Deer Lodge Valley, " Montana 41 (1991): 32;
15. Arthur E.Wells, Report of the Anaconda Smelter Smoke Commission, October 1, 1920, National Archives, (Record Group 70, Box278): 1
16. Mac Millan, "Struggle to Abate Air Pollution, " 108-112, quote 108.
17. Anaconda Minerals Company, Mill Creek Remedial Investigation Report (Anaconda, Montana: Anaconda Minerals Company, 1986), 24.
18. The seminal account of the Anaconda smelter pollution and subsequent legal battles is Donald MacMillan, Smoke Wars: Anaconda Copper, Montana Air Pollution, and the Courts, 1890-1924 (Montana Historical Society, 2001), but also
19. see the excellent history by Frederic L.Quivik, "Smoke and Tailings: An Environmental History of Copper Smelting Technologies in Montana, 1880-1930 " (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1998).
20. Van H.Manning, Yearbook of the Bureau of Mines 1916 (Washington, DC: Bureau of Mines, 1917), 153.
21. Frank Cameron, Cottrell: Samaritan of Science (New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1952), 178;
22. Swain, "Smoke and Fume, " 2385;
23. Wells, Smelter Smoke, 25, 53;
24. J.O. Elton, "Arsenic Trioxide from Flue Dust, " Transactions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers 46 (1913) 690;
25. H.Welch and L.H.Duschak, "The Vapor Pressure of Arsenic Trioxide, " Technical Paper No. 81 (Washington, DC: Bureau of Mines, 1914).
26. Donald MacMillan, "A History of the Struggle to Abate Air Pollution From Copper Smelters of the Far West, 1885-1933" (Ph.D. diss., University of Montana, 1973), 332-349.Even in modern copper smelting plants designed to capture and utilize pollutants, the levelsof arsenic and sulphur compounds that continue to be released have often still been dangerously high.
27. See Peter Dorman, "Environmental Protection, Employment, and Profit:The Politics of Public Interest in the Tacoma/Asarco Arsenic Dispute, " Review of Radical Political Economics 16 (1984): 151-176.
28. Fumio Matsumura, Toxicology of Insecticides (New York: Plenum Press, 1985), 92-93;
29. James C.Whorton, in Before Silent Spring: Pesticides and Public Health in pre-DDT America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 17, observes that arsenical compounds-usually arsenic trioxide-were the most important and widely used of the firstinorganic pesticides.
30. The Anaconda Company initially stored about three-quarters of the arsenic captured by theprecipitators: see Frederick Laist to Con Kelley, September 22, 1914, box 63, folder 6, Anaconda Copper Mining Records, Montana Historical Society. On heavy metalcontamination of the Clark Fork, see Environmental Protection Agency, "Superfund Program Fact Sheet: Anaconda Smelter Site, Anaconda, Montana, " June 1985. On Mill Creek, see Joshua Lipton, Terrestrial Resources Injury Assessment Report (Helena, Montana: State of Montana Natural Resource Damage Program, 1993), section 2, 2-5.
31. Cleaning up Montana: Superfund Accomplishments (Helena, Montana: Department of Environmental Quality, 1996), 26.
32. Alan S.Newell, A Brief Historical Overview of Anaconda Copper Mining Company's Principal Mining and Smelting Facilities along Silver Bow and Warm Spring Creeks, Montana (Missoula, Montana: Montana Historical Research Associates, 1995), 52;
33. Cameron, Cottrell, 38.
34. Cameron, Cottrell, 53-54;
35. Encyclopedia of American Biography, s.v. "Frederick G.Cottrell."
36. Frederick Cottrell, "The Research Corporation, an Experiment in Public Administration of Patent Rights, " Journal of Industrial Engineering Chemistry 4 (1912): 864-867;
37. James S.Coles, "The Cottrell Legacy: Research Corporation, A Foundation for the Advancement of Science, " in Cottrell Centennial Symposium: Air Pollution and Its Impact on Agriculture (Turlock, CA: Cal State Associates, 1977), viii-xvii.
38. Lawrence A.Smith, et al., Remedial Options for Metals Contaminated Sites (Boca Raton:Lewis Publishers, 1995), 17.