Scars on the Western landscape

Thousands of acres of abandoned mines, tens of thousands of miles of rutted timber roads, antiquated century-old dams, tainted soils and waters — these and other legacies of our resource-extractive past offer us economic opportunities galore.

Using the job skills of yesterday and tomorrow, the economy of Montana and the Rocky Mountains can flourish through the revitalization of our scarred landscape — mountains of pay dirt.

Although restoration work has begun, it is making only a small dent in the West's enormous toxic backlog. Here in Montana, important clean up continues along the Clark Fork River Basin from Butte to Idaho, including the beginning of the removal of the Milltown Dam and the hundreds of tons of toxic sediment lodged behind it.

In other Western states, a few truly innovative restoration efforts are either under way, as in New Mexico, Colorado and Utah, or under consideration, as along the Klamath River to our west. Those and other pieces of important work are ongoing but it is not enough.

At our current snail pace, landscape restoration will take centuries to complete, and in the meantime, problems will worsen due to erosion, landslides, toxic drainage, cost inflation and a host of other difficulties which, tragically, include the damage still being perpetrated by the occasional rogue, runaway extractive company.

The revitalization of our landscape and communities requires public support and encouragement. These lands and waterways are our responsibility. Much of the work is and will be accomplished with private dollars through the mechanism known as Stewardship Contracts — a process which results from legislation I first introduced in the U.S. Congress 20 years ago.

Those contracts trade goods for service — timber companies cut trees, and some of the proceeds pays for restoration work. As useful as those contracts are, they are insufficient to pay the full cost of restoration. In Montana, companies such as Atlantic Richfield and British Petroleum have had deep superfund liability pockets, but even those pockets have a bottom.

We, the public, must show a new willingness to invest in our land, water and communities. But first, we need to understand the potential, the value, of restoration. We must see it for what it is — an environmental industry, with good pay and benefits.

Perhaps we should think of it as we do other industries. Mining has an association, as does timber, construction and housing development. They have trade shows, titles, slogans and data to prove their worth. The restoration business has none of those. The public would understand restoration better if it had an identifiable center, a presence. Restoration needs a brand.

Appropriate repair of the land and the re-stitching of our rivers requires a new paradigm of public consideration. We Westerners need to re-imagine ourselves on this landscape. And we need to insist that our elected representatives shake off timidity — as Montana's Gov. Brian Schweitzer did by convening the recent Restoration Forum in Billings, in which he brought together business, labor, and environmentalists toward a common goal.

Both public and private leadership are essential in the effort to revitalize both the environment and the economy of Montana and the Rocky Mountain West.

Pat Williams served nine terms as a U.S. Representative from Montana. After his retirement, he returned to Montana and is teaching at the University of Montana-Missoula, where he also serves as a senior fellow at the Center for the Rocky Mountain West.