The Legacy of American Copper Smelting: Industrial Heritage versus Environmental Policy

Conclusion

Conclusion Two key factors combined to drive the dramatic technological change in American copper mining and smelting in the nineteenth century. First, copper demand increased at such a rate in the industrial and modern periods that supply lines often required significant modifications to existing technologies to achieve ever-greater output and efficiency. Second, expansive lean and sulfur-rich lodes were discovered that required complex mechanical , chemical, and thermodynamic processes to economically extricate the copper from their ores. American copper demand was so great, and many of its primary ores so lean, that the industry further required massive corporate organizations and labor forces to ensure profitable scales of operations . Important nineteenth- and twentieth-century copper mines operated in more than twelve states.1 But such extensive copper recovery from ores, largely between 0.5% and 5% rich, meant that mining, milling, and smelting generated a considerable amount of waste, ultimately leading to significant environmental problems and significant Superfund remediation projects managed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in, among other places, Montana, Tennessee, and Michigan. By 2008, copper production in the United States was largely centered on very low-grade porphyry deposits in a few mining districts in Arizona , Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, and Montana, and processed at one of only three smelters in Arizona or Utah or outside of the country. Although it no longer had the largest copper output in the world, the U.S. still produced 1.25 million metric tons of copper and processed scrap in 2008, which was a little above the yearly U.S. average for the preceding century.2 Montana copper production, the smallest of five producing states, came from Montana Resources, Inc. in Butte, and a small portion of the total scrap handled in America came from Peninsula Copper Industries reprocessing of discarded copper-rich components and wire at the former Calumet and Hecla Smelter site in Hubbell, Michigan. Conclusion 182 Both the 2008 Montana and Michigan copper operations were relatively insignificant reflections of what the industry once meant to the economies of both regions, but in some small measure, the once-dominant regions still produced copper-rich materials using means and methods developed decades earlier. The economic and technological continuity with the past contributed to the heritage and identities of both regions, especially as they neared the end of controversial Superfund remediation projects. Although Tennessee had no active copper-related industry left after its last chemical plant closed in 2008, it was also nearing the end of active remediation. The Superfund projects in each district defined the end, perhaps the bitter end, of their once-dominant mining periods. Although two districts created noteworthy by-product processes, all three developed significant mining, milling, and smelting processes on a scale that created jobs, social structures, regional identities, waste streams, and significant wealth, the last one mostly for outside investors. Whereas there tended to be a fairly fluid exchange of mining workers and engineers among active mining districts, later and older generations tended to stay put, especially as production ended. Those later residents had to face the ultimate decline of production and the indignities of not only deepening mineralogical insignificance, but also the implicit culpability of being party to serious environmental degradation without necessarily sharing in much, if any, of the wealth generated by mining. Thisstudyexaminedtheeffectsofenvironmentalremediationonthe heritage and preservation of industrial regions, specifically examining copper smelting in a broader mining landscape and the complex negotiations undertaken and compromises reached by outside remediaters and inside preservationists, as each argued for what it considered was the best course of action. Chapters 1 and 2 explored the technological and environmental history of copper smelting from its prehistoric origins through the twentieth century, when American copper mines and smelters dominated world production, and the American economy dominated world consumption. Chapters 3 through 5 focused on three of the most significant nineteenthcentury copper mining districts in the United States—the Keweenaw Peninsula of Michigan, the Butte-Anaconda district in Montana, and the Ducktown district in Tennessee—and investigated the conflict between historic preservation and environmental remediation. Conclusion 183 Landscapes Copper mining and smelting in Montana, Tennessee, and Michigan left important legacies with which later generations would have to contend. (See table 6.1) All three mining districts were developed on important ore lodes, in stunning mountainous or hilly surroundings, near rich waterways and thick woods. All three developed or adapted technologies and social structures to overcome the...