How dare they say such things

By The Standard Staff - 10/12/2007

Almost every time Butte is featured in a national magazine or newspaper, the writer seems compelled to include at least a couple lines portraying our fine city as a death zone or a ghost town.

The latest articles on Don and Andrea Stierle’s research into Berkeley Pit microbes are no exception. Both contribute to the body of “Diss Butte” literature.

Actually, only the lead of Christopher Maag’s New York Times article is off-putting. “Death sits on the east side of this city,” he begins.

Granted, he is referring to the Berkeley Pit, and the rest of the article is a well-done portrait of the Stierles’ work, but was that strident start really necessary?

A reference to the hundreds of geese that died there in 1995 soon follows, but there’s no mention that it was an isolated incident or that a bird mitigation plan is carefully followed to make sure it never happens again. Nor did he mention the water treatment plant ready to handle “death” when the time comes, or the court order capping the water level to ensure it pollutes no more.

Those facts didn’t make the article in the September issue of Wired magazine either, but the geese are in there, along with the statement that “the water is still rushing in today.” The headline describes the microbes as “Creatures from Black Lagoon,” and author Guy Gugliotta calls the pit “a toxic teardrop in the middle of a Montana wasteland.” Those lines are actually kind of funny and creative, but then Gugliotta says the effects of turning off the underground pumps and letting the pit flood have been “catastrophic.” True, the pit is a huge environmental scar that will require constant monitoring and water treatment in perpetuity, but it’s hardly “catastrophic.” That statement leaves the impression the pit has ruined Butte, leaving nothing but gallons of toxic water in its wake. Hurricane Katrina was catastrophic; flooding the pit created a Superfund site that must be dealt with accordingly.

Butte is an easy target for literary hyperbole because unlike other places where pollution is often a well-kept secret, our biggest liability is out there in plain view for all the world to see, but we’re dealing with it. The site has been studied at length and is constantly monitored, with a plan in place to eventually treat the water, but no one seems interested in that dull part of the story.

The trend is upward, however, and that’s good. These latest articles contain few objectionable statements, compared to some of their predecessors. Arguably the worst offender was the nearly 7,000-word piece published in Outside magazine in September 1996.

Titled “As the Snake Did Away with the Geese,” author Mark Levine called Butte “an inhabited ghost town,” a place where “here and there small fires burn among the rubble” and where cats could not survive until recently because “the dirt they cleaned from their fur was tainted with arsenic.” The Stierles weren’t interviewed for that article, but coincidentally, Andrea had a letter published in Outside following its release, calling the piece “flawed and nasty.” In contrast, she said both Maag and Gugliotta loved Butte and its old buildings and the renaissance under way.

Too bad none of that made it into their articles, but maybe they’ll return someday and chronicle the rebirth of the Uptown. There is still quite a bit of birthing to be done, however, as evidenced by Gugliotta’s near-closing remarks: “In town, the upper floors in the big old buildings are boarded up. Lower floors have become storefront shops selling ‘antiques’ that probably came from the upper floors. Local businesses are shutting down, replaced by megastores crouched near freeway on-ramps.” Ouch. There’s just enough truth in that description to make it painful to read, rather than objectionable like the pit remarks. But if we can use it as motivation to ensure he and others paint a different picture of the Uptown the next time they visit Butte, then they will have been valuable words indeed.