Butte lands national mining summit in September

By Holly Michels - 02/09/2008

Butte and Anaconda have been selected to co-host the 2008 National Summit of Mining Communities.

The event, which will be held Sept. 7-11, will attract elected officials, leaders and industry people from mining cities across the country. The summit drew about 150 people to Leadville, Colo., in 2006 and 2007, the first two years it was held.

“We’re hoping to get people there from Michigan, Pennsyl-vania, the western states, all over,” Butte-Silver Bow Recla-mation Specialist Tom Malloy told The Montana Standard. “We especially want the chief executives and the elected representatives, people who decide where resources are spent.” Kevin Mellott, chairman of the summit planning committee, said the event is geared toward cities and towns, not mining companies, and will teach “the nuts and bolts” of being an active community for an active tomorrow.

“Having that conference will allow our community as well as others to learn about some of the planning strategies and clean up strategies (related to mines).” Mellott said mining towns can learn from each other how to deal with the boom-and-bust nature of mining.

“The summit allows communities to share experiences,” he said. “They can share how to fill the void quickly (if mining shuts down), how to avoid those voids and what to look forward to if you are starting down that road.” Mellott said it’s “amazing to see the similarities” between other mining communities like Leadville and Butte.

“They have the same architecture, the same type of design, their main street is Harrison Avenue,” he said. “These long-term mining communities have these connections they don’t even know about until you start communicating.” He hopes the summit will bring from 250 to 300 people to Butte and Anaconda.

“(They will) spend a week’s worth of hotels and food and tourist activities, those types of immediate gains.” Anaconda Chief Executive Rebecca Guay said the strong mining past of Butte and Anaconda helped bring the conference to southwest Montana.

“(We were attractive) because of the historical mining perspective, we’re unique in that we have the historic perspective and ongoing working mines available for tours and all the remediation coming up,” she said.

The summit attendees will likely tour Old Works Golf Course, Smelter Hill and the stack, waste management areas and Warm Springs Ponds near Anaconda. Butte sites include Montana Resources and historical mine operations.

“It means national exposure for us,” Guay said. “We’ll be drawing people from all over the country and Canada, reaching out to all types of mining communities.” Malloy said the summit started as a grassroots effort when mines across the country realized the cities and towns they operate in share many of the same issues and problems related to mineral extraction. The summit’s motto is “Too Tough To Die.” Malloy said Butte applied to host the conference last year. He later discovered Anaconda also applied. The two communities later joined their proposals.

The conference is tentatively slated to take place at the Finlen Hotel, 100 E. Broadway St., and the Thornton Building, 65 E. Broadway St.