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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

Hey Twin Cities...shut up!

Nancy Jo Tubbs
Posted 9/11/13

Emboldened by a Sept. 1 opinion piece in the Star Tribune that scolded some Twin Cities residents for supporting the environmental health of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, other …

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Hey Twin Cities...shut up!

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Emboldened by a Sept. 1 opinion piece in the Star Tribune that scolded some Twin Cities residents for supporting the environmental health of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, other pro-development folks in recreation areas have followed suit to publically snarl at visiting tourists for their selfish opinions.

The editorial topic was the conflict between genuinely concerned citizens of an “economically collapsing” city of Ely that hopes to benefit from proposed copper-nickel mining and those who genuinely fear that sulfide poisoning would result and severely harm the watershed and canoe-only BWCAW.

Visitors from the Twin Cities shouldn’t sign anti-mining petitions, it said. You don’t live here, it said. You don’t get to have an opinion, it said. And as for the B-Dub national wilderness, nobody wants to come sleep on a rock and only be able to paddle a canoe instead of zipping around in a motorboat. What fun is that?

The Star Tribune piece didn’t bother with phony respect for Ely visitors, who are apparently a bunch of dumb bunnies. It told it like it is: “I’m not expecting much, given the Twin Cities crowd. It’s always about their good time. Nonetheless, I thought I’d give it a try.”

You might think it a shocking marketing strategy to slap your customers around, but that seems to be a trend. You couldn’t make this stuff up. Or could you? For example…

“Who do you think you are to speak out against local interests in uranium mining around the Grand Canyon?” one mining advocate might have challenged millions of members of organizations including the Sierra Club and Grand Canyon Trust and the Navajo Nation. “Sure the Grand Canyon National Park belongs to the nation, hence the word ‘national’, but true Americans wouldn’t be against any mining anywhere, any time.”

A longtime controversy (a bit of background) over mining near GCNP intensified last year after the Obama administration banned new uranium extraction projects in order to protect the watershed from pollution in a million acres around the national park. Old claims that have “valid existing rights” could proceed. A tangle of lawsuits from mining, environmental and tribal interests ensued.

And then a speech to the dumb bunnies: “Most of you will only visit the Grand Canyon once in your lifetime,” the mining advocate said in response to concerned Arizona visitors. “What do you care about pollution from uranium? Even if there are five million of you tourists coming here a year, your exposure to radiation would be minimal. Everybody just take a little bit. Besides, air pollution is a problem. Already you can’t see those panoramic views of old rock shapes as well through the smog. And you know the river’s been dammed, right? Oh, and there are always noisy planes flying over. Some folks would say that the Grand Canyon isn’t so grand anymore.”

Meanwhile in our nation’s capitol a storm might have brewed over repairs to the Washington Monument. After the August 2011 earthquake measuring 5.8 on the Richter scale cracked the iconic obelisk at the National Mall, the National Park Service closed the monument and started damage assessment.

“They should have stopped right there and just knocked down that pile of marble,” a Washington, D.C. developer might have said. “It’s the National Mall, people. It should have a fabulous shopping MALL, for cripes sake.Why should Bloomington, fricken, Minnesota, get to have a retail development named Mall of America? Who do those Twin Cities twerps think they are? Give us that name. You can have the Mall of the Middle of Nowhere.

“Get rid of that outdated monument—by now everybody knows the first U.S. President was James Washington—and put a shopping opportunity at the heart of the capitol city. Caribou Coffee, American Girl, Buffalo Wild Wings—that’s what America wants.

“Repairing that thing is going to cost $15 million. What a waste. Hey, nothing’s sacred. Thank goodness for that editorial letter in Minnesota about mining for Ely,” said the developer.

“We’ve been wanting to come right out and set a bunch of people straight. We’ve got priorities, and they’re not about saving some backwoods watershed or an outdated building or a clump of trees.

“That editorial really opened the door for us to say it straight. But, sadly, like the writer said, those people won’t get it. We don’t expect much from that bunch of dumb bunnies.”