The following is from a March 2 story in the Deseret Morning News.
” Salt Lake County ranks second in the nation as a depository for the most materials containing toxic substances.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s annual report of the top 20 counties in the country that have these deposits, 120.3 million pounds of materials containing toxic substances were deposited in Salt Lake County in 2007.
That puts Salt Lake County behind Alaska’s Northwest Arctic County, with 615.3 million pounds of materials deposited, but ahead of Humboldt County, Nev., which had 84.6 million pounds of materials deposited — and 17 other counties with smaller numbers.
Ostensibly, Salt Lake County’s numbers are so high because Kennecott Utah Copper, one of the world’s largest copper mines, is located in the county.”
I cannot believe that your organization actually posts such articles. Did you even read the commentary, and I qoute: (…Rick Sprott, executive director of the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, said the huge number reported to the EPA “tends to overwhelm other releases that could be far more dangerous to public health. The risk to the public from Kennecott’s impounded tailings is so low, I would be a lot more worried about diesel fumes along the highways or even automobile painting in neighborhoods. They don’t rise to the level of the Kennecott landfill.”
Yes, Kennecott is without question moving a lot of rock from their pit to their mill and to waste piles every day, and I am also sure that all of us use copper from the Bingham mine every day.
Even though I’m sure I’ll get some heat, I’ll end with a couple of famous quotes,
“We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them”. Titus Livius, Roman Author & Historian, 59BC-17AD.
“First get your facts, then you can distort them at your leisure” Mark Twain
Dear Mr. Peterson,
This article was posted for a variety of reasons. One of which was to show the great lenghts that state and local agencies will go to protect the image of industries with terrible environmental track records. This is a common theme. If a company is providing the lion’s share of economic growth in an area, there is a knee-jerk reaction to defend and ignore that company’s short-comings. This article is an example of this behavior.