Idaho Wilderness Hearings

Statement:

Ms. McGinnis. Mr. Chairman and committee members, my name is Pat McGinnis. I'live in Ketchum, Idaho, just a stone's throw from some of the majestic mountain ranges of central Idaho. Right now my town is jammed with a steady stream of traffic, vehicles from all parts of the United States taking people through this scenic recreation area. Not all will leave their cars and camp ers behind to venture forth on foot into these rich, roadless areas, but for those who wish to, the opportunity should always be there. I wait in line to buy gas and groceries on Saturday mornings, but I don't mind. I am headed for the mountains, too. I am an Idahoan who wants to keep Idaho for everyone. When I was a foruth grade student in Idaho Falls studying Idaho history, I learned that even though our license plates boasted of famous potatoes we were also known as the Gem State. Several years and many scenic journeys later I realized that it wasn't the deposits of silver, gold, lead, and molybdenum that gave Idaho its nickname. In my mind, it was the mountains, forests, lakes, streams, and wildlife that made Idaho a gem in the true sense of the word. I stand before this committee today because I feel my birthright is being threatened by greedy corporations that want to open up our wilderness areas to make a buck mining and logging our natu ral resources with no conscienceness about what they leave behind. I have lived in northern Idaho several years and have seen the devastation of the Silver Valley. Sure, those mines provided a living for a few people for a few years. However, I can t help but remember returning to Kellogg on the day the Bunker Hill mine was closing because profits were down and it had been sold to a Texas corporation. I don't know which was worse, the rape of the countryside or the destruction of a whole community of people, in cluding lead poisoning of their children. I'll never forget the shock and sadness I felt while driving through some of the backroads of Wallace and Kellogg. I thought people only existed like this in the coal mining regions of Kentucky and West Virginia; not in Idaho. A few months after my trip to the Panhandle, I witnessed the same kind of madness much closer to home. I toured the Challis and Thompson Creek area where ASARCO was gearing up their operations for a molybdenum mine. It made me very angry to see a once beautiful drainage area being desecrated by huge machines and dynamite in quest of a metal of which there is no shortage and not really much demand. After 2 years of roadbuilding and getting rid of the overburden, which, in my dictionary, means vegetation and wildlife, not one ounce of molybdenum has been mined for sale. The only result is that the town of Challis experienced a false boom, with a high rate 361 of crime and heavy impacts on public lands and rivers bordering the area.