“It's in its infancy, but when we can quantify it, people are going to recognize it for the economic force it is,” Gov. Brian Schweitzer said Wednesday during a meeting with the Missoulian's editorial board.
Schweitzer was in town to speak at a conference focusing on the West's so-called “restoration economy,” organized by Western Progress, a progressive think tank with offices in Phoenix, Denver and Missoula.
In Missoula, of course, the restoration economy is right under our noses in the many millions of dollars being spent by British Petroleum - Schweitzer calls the company, which bought Atlantic Richfield Co., “our British uncle” - to clean up the toxic mess that collected behind Milltown Dam during more than 100 years of mining and smelting upstream.
“You've got a real good example here with Milltown,” said Alan Stephens, executive director of Western Progress.
But it's happening all over the West, Stephens said, in Utah, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona.
“We do think this is the face of the future,” Stephens said.
Schweitzer said Milltown is the shining, expensive - $100 million - example of restoration, but noted that cleanups of small-scale environmental problems are occurring all over the state. What that creates, he said, is an economy that is effectively stepping in to replace the extractive economy that once buoyed Montana, but is now in decline. And which, frankly, caused most of the problems, Schweitzer said.
Pat Williams, the former Democratic congressman who now works with both Western Progress and the University of Montana's Center for the Rocky Mountain West, recalled the days when the West was politically torn between jobs and the environment.
“Politicians got a lot of mileage out of that, but it's no longer true anymore,” he said. “It's absolutely false. Now and in the future, it's jobs for the environment. The old canard is no longer true.”
Interestingly, Williams noted that many of the skills associated with extractive industries are being used in the restoration economy. Milltown is a perfect example.
“Look out there at what they're doing,” he said. “They're mining, but it's wastes. They're trucking. They're running the railroad. The jobs that existed before are still here, but they're just being used in different ways.”
And it's not just cleanup from mining. Montana's forests, both burned and still intact, are in line for plenty of restoration work. Watersheds damaged by years of logging and road-building need help, as well.
“By fixing those things, we improve our quality of life,” Schweitzer said. “And if you don't believe it's quality of life that's driving our economy, you're just wrong.”
Beyond the restoration work itself, Schweitzer said technologies will be created that will then be exportable beyond Montana's borders.
“The people and companies that do this work will come up with new methods for handling these problems, and those technologies will be needed across the country and across the world,” Schweitzer said. “We're not the only place in the world that has these problems, but we're working on them, and that has value in so many ways.”
Reporter Michael Moore can be reached at 523-5252 or at mmoore@missoulian.com.
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