by Matt Ankney, SAVE HAWN!
The Department of Natural Resources approved a permit for an open pit sand mine in the Hawn State Park area next to Hickory Canyons without performing an environmental study because Missouri is “pro-business”, and the mining industry is extremely profitable. The mine company is not held responsible for the environmental destruction they leave behind and our campaign finance laws allow companies like NextGen Silica to permanently destroy prime, viable land, leaving a giant hole in the ground projected to be around 150 feet deep, while donating money to the politicians that run the DNR at the same time. We are told the mine creates jobs, but it actually destroys all jobs in the future on the property except one.
The idea that the NextGen Silica open pit sand mine will operate for 50 years is a corporate deception. Most similar sand mines close early for different reasons like the defunct sand mine in nearby Brewer, Missouri the DNR approved that rapidly depleted the smaller, local aquifer as residents were forced to import water by truck at their own expense. The former mine site in Brewer has been left in complete disarray with logged trees strewn around a scarred dystopian landscape; residents use the blight as a stark warning to others nearby. The Hawn area mine intends to tap the trillion-gallon St. Francois aquifer, possibly depleting it before contaminating the underground water supply for several hundred thousand Ozark residents in seven counties.
Operating a landfill is also highly profitable. Most landfills in the St. Louis area originated as deep limestone quarries or mines, they are now giant mountains of garbage seen from miles away, exhausting toxic fumes into the air after decades of overfilling. Methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, is created deep under the trash pile and must be released on a regular basis. Over time, it is common for the toxic subterranean depths of a landfill under pressure to ignite in a chemical reaction fire that smolders for years, sometimes decades.
Citizens of St. Louis County were sickened in a prolonged health crisis involving a large-scale landfill that caught fire underground destroying their property values; a problem deemed unsolvable as the DNR allowed the toxic trash fire to persist for years with no serious attempt to stop it. The company was never seriously fined for their neglect and cost-cutting behavior contributing to the fire and no executive or employee of the landfill operator was held accountable in any way for one of St. Louis’s largest environmental disasters of the modern age in a metropolitan area of millions of people.
The Bridgeton-West Lake landfill operator denied any problems for years as the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, the main state regulator of mines and landfills, allowed the company to stall, further sickening the surrounding neighborhood, exposing small children to cancerous chemicals in the fetid air for long periods of time.
The description of the smell of a large landfill on fire is like a chemical toilet inside a trash dumpster in flames. Native Shortleaf pine in the Hawn State Park area provides a distinct sandalwood aroma popular with visitors that can be erased overnight by the sour stench of a massive garbage dump nearby.
We as a society are not learning enough lessons fast enough, the hard reckonings at the wrong time in the wrong places are at hand. Missouri does not plan things for the future in a deliberate and consistent manner for the benefit of the general public like a sophisticated culture able to consider many factors without letting a handful of powerful special interests dominate and interfere; this is how large swaths of the Ozarks are destroyed and polluted, this is how our residents get sick and die from cancer.
The trajectory for the scenic, ecologically sensitive Highway 32 corridor in Ste. Genevieve County follows a path of parkland, mine, landfill. Once the NextGen Silica mine closes, pro-business Missouri will then approve a permit for a landfill without an environmental study because landfills also create jobs.
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A Warning from the Heartland (short documentary)