Plastic Skating Rink

I visited the folks in Tampa last week and at a nearby outdoor mall they’ve got a plastic skating rink. The rink is put together with a pvc-coated puzzle-piece tile and the kids wear a dull plastic-bladed skate. To top it off, all of the kids are pushing around a pvc-pipe support frame–just one more thing to take away the from the experience of ice skating.

Burke, Idaho

Burke, Idaho
Obsidian Flow (Flickr)

After our visit, in Wallace, we spent a few minutes driving through Burke, Idaho. Burke is about as ghost town as it gets. Like many towns in the area it used to be bustling with the lead and silver mines. However, the area would get contaminated and the mines would get shut down.

The creek that runs through town contains zinc, lead, and cadmium 50 times above the ideal water standards. The EPA offered to buy out the remaining 300 residents of the town, closing the valley, but the remaining residents refused. They don’t trust the government and see the EPA as the agency that took away their livelihoods.

Our brief visit was quick and depressing. Buildings were in decay and the streets were empty. It did look like some work was being done to put filtration barriers along the road, most likely to minimize storm water from flowing into the creek.

Silver Mine in Wallace, Idaho

On our way to the Trail of the Hiawatha, Joan and I stopped in Wallace, Idaho for an early lunch. Wallace is an interesting town. In 1920, Wallace had the greatest number of millionaires per capita–a result of the silver mines in the area. We took a tour of one of the silver mines and that was a worthwhile trip. The guide, Percy, worked in the mine for two years in 1979-80 before the mine was shut down and he moved to the smelting factory. He made it clear that that the $32,000 a year he made in each of those two years was the most he’s ever made and there was no love lost with the EPA, who shut down the mine. We didn’t ask why the mine was shut down, but I suspect that the soil (and ultimately the groundwater) was getting contaminated with lead and cadmium. That $32K in 1980 is about $115,000 in today’s dollars so I can understand why the guy might have a chip on his shoulder.