WHO THE HELL IS CHRIS CLINE, AND WHAT DOES HE HAVE TO DO WITH WISCONSIN?

(Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Green Bay Press Gazette, Associated Press, Frazer Chronicle)

 

Christopher Cline possibly has never visited northern Wisconsin, and probably has never set foot in Wisconsin. Chris Cline is a bronzed 54 year old business man from Palm Beach, Florida near the southern tip of the sunshine state. Cline is listed among American Billionaires, 278^th. as well as the Forbes publication, #736th…..exactly where I’d like to be recognized.

 

Although Cline probably isn’t a self made man, he none-the-less was given enough by his father to jump start his business career. Born in Beckley, West Virginia in 1958, Cline came from a coal miner’s background. Both grandfather and father were coal miners in the coal mines in and around Beckley, and in 1980, when Christopher was just 21, his father bought out his mining partner and gave the shares to this son, an aspiring psychology major at Marshall University.

 

I guess you can wash the coal dust off a miner, but you can never take away the fascination with digging for it. Cline has spent more than $300 million on mineral rights and equipment in Illinois, and has developed at least 5 coal mine operations in the state.

 

Cline is a classic major business man, a keen judge of people, he, Cline has developed several new mining operations through subsidiary companies. Along the way Cline and his people have practiced business in the normal process with regards to the mining industry, by buying politicians, bullying environmental groups and property landowners into submission. When these tactics fail, people like the Cline group simply wait, as long as a generation or two, and then resurface and re-establish their desires.

 

Cline said that humankind will benefit more from cheap and abundant energy then from overreacting to what he calls minimal increases so far in atmospheric CO2 and the levels of the world’s oceans. In an interview Cline stated that “as far as the social acceptability of coal, I like to think I’m part of supplying the cheapest energy in America.”

 

Illinois coal supply is becoming a Cline success story as far a production is concerned, but for Cline to try and sell coal as a cheap source of energy just isn’t true. Possibly the initial cost is low, but the long term effect that the industry has on the land as well as human health can only be guessed at.

 

My folks had a coal furnace when I was a kid growing up in Michigan, I should know, one of my jobs was to stoke the fire in the morning before I went to school. The black soot from my stoking action left the snow outdoors blanketed with the black of the soot that I had dislodged from the furnace. Imagine my folks yard sitting next to a coal generator and…..well you get the idea.

 

TROUBLE IN ILLINOIS

Cline and his subsidiary companies have come under fire in some of their coal mines as long standing problems with ground water have not been addressed by Macoupin Energy, and the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency will refer the case to the Illinois attorney general.

 

Groundwater is well…..groundwater, it collects on the surface and seeps into the ground through cracks, spaces in soil, sand and rocks called aquifers. Aquifers’ consist of gravel, sand, sandstone or fractured rock. I suppose a person could call an aquifer a giant water bottle, aquifers are where we get the water that we drink, was in and where ice cubes come from are afternoon hot toddies.

 

 

When these aquifers get polluted, we can’t use the water therein, we are left with bottled water to guard against the crap that is now locked into our water. To make a long story short, until the water is filtered, we are left with the expense of buying water at the super market. Worse polluted water and air can cause all sorts of health issues.

 

A new study by Europe’s Health and Environment Alliance, (HEAL) is nothing short of a wakeup call about the dangers of coal-fired power. 18,200 premature deaths, 8,500 cases of chronic bronchitis, and 250,600 life years lost.

 

Scientific reports, health officials and doctors all seem to point a boney finger at the pollution that comes from coal mining. Will anything change in the foreseeable future, well until the grim reaper is at our door, most probably not, by then it will probably be too late, so I guess for portions of our country that support mining operations, get used to buying a week’s supply of water at your local market.

 

ENTER CHRISTOPHER CLINE

Chris Cline and his Gogebic Taconite Mining Company are wanting to enter into open pit mining in the far reaches of Wisconsin, a mile wide, 500 feet deep and 22 mile long entry. I can say this from personal experience, the pristine environmental make-up of the area will never be the same…..count on it, I’ve seen it in out of the way places like Palmer and National Mine, Michigan,  these pit stop villages will never be the same.

 

Palmer, Michigan is dominated on the western side of the village by a 500’ waste rock pile that will never, ever be removed. During a windy day, you can see the red dust for miles around, and every few years the local mining company paints the village houses….for free.

 

The degradation that open pit mining causes is horrific; take a quick visit to Hibbing, Minnesota sometime, and check out their open pit operation for the gray gold that taconite is called, a mile wide, by 500’ or so deep…..and 15 miles wide. Exactly what will be done when the mining company leaves town, nothing, how can you fill a hole that big!

 

Did you ever hear of the term sold out it’s what the Wisconsin government did, in fact they waived a $7 a ton fee that the mine company was supposed to pay the state. Think about that for a minute, $7 a ton times, oh let me just pick a figure, 10 million ton of iron ore at $7 dollars a ton…..$10,000,000, wow, thank you very much Governor Walker.

 

Whenever you have a mining operation you are going to have environmental violations, the balance between man, enterprise and nature is a delicate balance that needs to be address at all times. Hell I’m a mining advocate, I think the delicate balance is possible, but only if everybody works at it.

 

People like Christopher Cline are not really equipped to handle such a balancing act, people like Chris Cline simply do not care what happens to people in the northern reaches of Wisconsin…..he and his companies have a track record in Illinois, and I’m sure his father taught and observed the same track record in his mining ventures in and around Beckley, West Virginia.

 

I know of a case in Upper Michigan where 51 iron miners lost their lives in the United States worst iron mining accident. After a short investigation, within three months of the tragedy, the mine had been closed, buildings all but moved and everybody had been paid off.

 

And when, at the final hearing into the disaster in Lansing, Michigan, a Senator asked the owner of the mining company if there could have been additional safety procedures followed, William Gwinn Mather thundered back at the Senator…..”How dare you question me.”

 

The mentality remains to this day, even though we have instant news coverage, cell phone pictures and a supposed watch dog press. Hopefully little loss of life or limb will occur in the new mining venture near Hurley, Wisconsin…..but what about the environment?